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The Rise and Fall of Solar Panel Thieves

Everybody loves solar! The green, clean, renewable energy is gaining acceptance, as more and more populations adopt it. It started with the innovators, who installed systems even when they were very expensive and less efficient than the systems today. In time, innovators were followed by home owners, land owners, farmers, investors, and now… thieves.

Apparently stealing solar photovoltaic systems is a new trend among thieves, mainly during the nighttime, when the solar panels are not producing electricity and pose less danger.

In Germany, the largest and oldest PV market in the world, solar panel theft has become so prevalent, that the police decided to set up special task forces. [In 2007, 13 cases of solar panel theft were reported in Bavaria alone, amounting to a loss of 630,000 Euro.] Photon magazine offers a theft hotline and online database for stolen panels, in which people can update details of stolen panels – manufacturer and model, serial number, date and place of theft – or check if the panels they have purchased are stolen property.

In the United States, theft is also a menace. Many wineries in California, the largest PV market in the US, seek to reduce their CO2 footprint by installing solar systems that provide the winery’s electricity needs. In Napa Valley wineries alone, hundreds of solar panels, worth around $1,000 each, were stolen over the past year. Several wineries have been hit more than once.

In African villages, solar panels are often the only source of energy, used to provide electricity for water pumps, for lights and computers at schools and for drug refrigerators in medical clinics. Panel theft is no different there, where in Senegal, for example, up to 15% of solar panels installed were stolen.

One of the most interesting angles to this story is that the stolen panels market is thriving through the internet. Stolen panels are apparently sold on eBay and Craigslist. When a guy in California tried to sell stolen solar panels for $100 apiece on eBay, police detectives became suspicious, won the bid, and arrested the guy when he came to deliver.

Well, it seems like a global epidemic and my guess is – the more solar panels installed, the more we will encounter these savvy, “environmentally conscious” thieves.  

So, what can be done? I have seen many proposed solutions ranging from shotguns and electric shockers to glues and tapes. One commenter to TreeHugger’s blog on how to prevent solar panel theft suggests using flocks of geese, which were used by the ancient Romans to guard bridges since they are extremely territorial and frightfully noisy when alarmed. He also points out to the added value: they lay eggs.

We at SolarEdge have a different solution to this problem. It does not involve violence or animals of any kind, but might make thieves think twice before they steal one of our systems.

Since the SolarEdge solution already includes panel-embedded smart electronic chips, we have the means to digitally lock each and every panel, if a system is stolen. When PowerBoxes (SolarEdge power optimizers) receive no activation signal from the SolarEdge inverter, they automatically “immobilize” the panels so that no power is produced. This prevents re-use of the panels, rendering them, well, useless.

A sophisticated thief might say to himself: “I’ll just steal the inverter along with the panels and the system will continue operating”. However, since our solar inverter communicates with our monitoring server through built-in communication hardware, when the inverter does not receive activation signals from the server for a period defined by the legal owner, the inverter is also immobilized, making theft of the whole system pointless.

Now what can the thieves do with immobilized solar panels and an inactivated inverter? They definitely cannot sell them on eBay, and if it can’t be sold, what’s the point in stealing it?

To explain the entire concept, from the problem through the solution, in fewer words and more graphics, we have created a cool 1.5 minute long animation demo. Take a look: