The Olympia school fire is causing a nationally-known Tesla whistleblower to speak out about against defective electrical connectors.
Steven Henkes worked with Toyota for a number of years as a quality division manager before moving to a company called Solar City in 2016 where he took a position as a quality engineer. Shortly after that Tesla acquired Solar City.
After the acquisition, Henkes’ position changed. In his new position as a field quality manager Henkes became aware of problems with defective electrical connectors in December 2017. The connector problems could lead to solar panels catching on fire and increased fire risks in the company’s solar installations.
Henkes raised his safety concerns related to the connectors internally. He later learned that Solar City/Tesla had been well aware of the problems for years.
In 2019 Henkes still served as a solar field quality manager with Tesla. Henkes was not satisfied with Tesla’s responses to his concerns and ultimately filed formal complaints with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission.
Henkes was fired from Tesla in August 2020.
Henkes remains concerned about solar panels installed between 2015 through late 2018, in which Olympia’s panels were installed. The school bought the panels in 2016. Between 2015 through late 2018 that was the time period during which the faulty connectors were used. No recall has been issued. As a result the clock continues to tick and no one knows what solar installation using these connections may catch fire next. Northpoint Elementary School and a few other Unit 5 buildings are getting solar panels.
Thanks partly to Henkes efforts the problem with the connectors was solved and connectors installed since late 2018 do not have such a propensity to start fires.
However, we still have the problem with the solar panels from 2015 to 2018. That problem is further complicated by the fact that no one knows where all the faulty connectors were installed. And nobody is talking about it.
According to Henkes, it was these connectors that caused many of the WalMart fires.
And Henkes believes they most likely started the Olympia High School fire.
The supplier that made the bad connectors was Amphenol. The featured photograph used for this story is a picture of Amphenol connectors from maintenance documents Henkes obtained from Olympia High School.
Henkes has also learned the panels on Olympia High School were manufactured in 2016.
Henkes said, “Those panels then are right in the sweet spot with regards to the serial number.”
According to Henkes, not only has Olympia School had a fire but we have also had fires at a Boy’s and Girl’s club and a library. Plus, the Farmington, Illinois Community Fire Protection District said on its Facebook page that an inverter panel was burning back in June of this year and it caused a grass fire. Fire department photos show the inverter, a key component of the electricity-producing solar array, was severely damaged.
At an April meeting, Halo Solar representatives told the Unit school board the U.S. Department of Energy estimates only one in 10,000 solar arrays have a malfunction of the nature seen at Olympia. Halo’s staff told the school board they couldn’t speak to that particular system, they said the technology has improved despite there being no recalls issued for the defective connectors.
Henkes just shakes his head when it comes to the one in 10,000 figure being used to say solar panel fires are rare. He calls it voodoo that one in 10,000 is a low risk and would like to find out who at the Department of Energy is spreading that around. One in 10,000 would be 0.01%. Henkes says that’s arson.
Henkes points out that if we go to six sigma, an industry standard used to reduce defects, reduce errors, minimize variation, increase quality and increase efficiency, “We are looking at the target rate for industry is 0.0000034 percent.”
