Solar PV Installations & EICR's

This hypothetical ideal  is not really the current state,  and even if it was, all that  regular inspection will go out the window with plug in systems - where everything beyond the plug is product, and arguably more or less temporary - and even if strictly it is not it probably will be treated as if it is.

That is of course partly the intent - part of making it some sort of installations possible at all  at the cheap end is indeed by removing the overheads - registered installers, inspections and connectors accessible etc,  from the equation.

Risk of accident is of course slightly increased, but probably not to an unacceptable level, for a product. It will be plugged in, and if it goes bang at some point, well it goes *** bang, just like any other cheap junk consumer electronic thing, and will be replaced with another one. 

There is a less flippant point , and that is to point out that not doing  also costs. It seems there were a few thousand excess deaths associated with recent heatwaves in the last month alone, that can be causally linked to our collective use of fossil fuel and general profligacy with energy.

Assuming predictions are broadly right, then this will mount to some hundreds of thousands of lives lost over the life of any installations going in right now. In one sense we all have blood on our hands from inaction already so any apparent extra risk needs to be offset  against that kind of calculation.
Dark, perhaps, but is it actually wrong?

regards
Mike.  

Dark, perhaps, but is it actually wrong?

Not wrong at all. The obvious conclusion being that allowing "a few" deaths directly down to plug-in solar could result in significantly fewer deaths overall. You can argue about details - e.g. hastening the death of someone who was in such poor health that they'd be dead in a year anyway isn't quite the same as the death of healthy child who happened to put their fingers in the wrong place - but overall the weightings and general principles likely still holds.

It's not a new debate. It's long been observed that the enviable safety record of modern railways (10-100x safer than the roads) is a bad thing overall - as all the safety comes with significant costs - which comes through in ticket prices (and to some extent with delays and cancellations) which discourages rail use. Whereas lower safety standards might mean cheaper tickets and so many more people choosing it as a means of transport - result some extra deaths on the rails but far fewer overall. Which is best?

  - Andy.

Dark, perhaps, but is it actually wrong?

Not wrong at all. The obvious conclusion being that allowing "a few" deaths directly down to plug-in solar could result in significantly fewer deaths overall. You can argue about details - e.g. hastening the death of someone who was in such poor health that they'd be dead in a year anyway isn't quite the same as the death of healthy child who happened to put their fingers in the wrong place - but overall the weightings and general principles likely still holds.

It's not a new debate. It's long been observed that the enviable safety record of modern railways (10-100x safer than the roads) is a bad thing overall - as all the safety comes with significant costs - which comes through in ticket prices (and to some extent with delays and cancellations) which discourages rail use. Whereas lower safety standards might mean cheaper tickets and so many more people choosing it as a means of transport - result some extra deaths on the rails but far fewer overall. Which is best?

  - Andy.