Thermalpas field deployment (Taiwan) · Power & Electrical
AUO floating solar: 8 joint faults caught before arcing
Thermal monitoring of DC combiner boxes, fuse holders and breakers on an over-water PV array.
- 200Combiner boxes monitored
- 8Faults caught (3 yrs)
- $20M+Customer estimate, one fire
The problem
AUO operates a floating solar farm on a Changbin water reservoir — kilometers of PV panels sitting on plastic floats, baking in the sun and salt spray. Each panel's combiner box has fuse holders and DC breakers that slowly corrode in the humid environment. If a joint degrades enough, you get a DC arc fault, and a fire on water is far harder to fight than a fire on dry land.
What was installed
Thermalpas IP68 sensors were sealed onto every fuse holder and DC breaker. The monitoring software pulled weather data — temperature, humidity, irradiance — to separate normal afternoon heat from heat that shouldn't be there, so real faults surfaced before an arc started without a stream of false alarms.
The outcome
AUO instrumented 200 combiner boxes at its Changbin site. Over three years, the system caught eight joint degradations before any reached arc threshold. The customer believes at least one would have ignited — on water, with emergency response and environmental cleanup it estimates at $20M+.
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