Reality check: When the power grid goes down, all grid-tie solar systems will go down with it

http://www.naturalnews.com/036194_solar_system_grid-tie_power_grid.html


Let me be clear, because some people reading this article seem to vastly misunderstand the issue: When the power grid goes down, your entire PV array is instantly disabled by your grid-tie inverters, and you cannot use your PV array for anything! Even if the sun is shining, you will have no power from it, period. Understand?


What's the reason behind all this? Because if the main power grid is down, the assumption is that a power line worker may be working on the line somewhere. If a local solar customer is feeding electricity back up the line, that can be dangerous -- even deadly -- to a power line worker. Thus, all grid-tie solar equipment sold today includes the "safety feature" of automatically shutting down when the grid goes down.