PV array grounding, good, bad, and the ugly

[RCinFLA]

I am not a big fan of Mike Holt as many times he is like listening to a patent lawyer arguing engineering details, but I do agree with him on auxiliary grounding rods, particularly on PV panel arrays.

The main contention is NEC requirements are dangerous.

 

[EG4_hutch]

The reason you don’t install multiple ground rods is to prevent ground loops in AC circuits. The same reason we don’t put fuses or circuit breakers on both the hot and neutral lines of AC circuits. It is dangerous to do so and would make AC power incredible dangerous to use.

Imagine what would happen if the neutral fuse or circuit breaker tripped, but the hot was still energized, and people started working on a circuit that had hot still energized. As soon as an individual got between the hot leg and ground, it could be catastrophic. It’s the same reason we don’t want ground loops. if you’re touching a hot leg and a ground loop circuit could be catastrophic.