The importance of ground fault protection
Don’t want to get electrocuted by your solar power system? Make sure you have ground fault protection in check. Most grid tie inverters such as the Xantrex GT Series have built in ground fault protection. According to NEC (National Electric Code) for solar photovoltaics states all roof mount solar photovoltaic arrays must have ground fault protection. What ground fault protection does is grounds the inverter itself through a grounding rod which prevents you from being shocked when touching the inverter.
The picture above is the Xantrex GT series PV Ground Fault Breakers that disconnects the solar photovoltaic array if a ground fault occurs in the wiring. Grounding your system also limits voltages due to line surges, lightning, or accidental contact with higher voltage lines. In addition grounding stabilizes voltages because the earth is a common reference point for the system. If there are over current devices on the system grounding provides a path for these devices to operate. Does this make sense?
Without being too technical, its important that your system is grounded for obvious reasons, and since most grid tie inverters come with ground fault protection you have no excuse not to ground your solar photovoltaic array.
