Building-Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) systems, which seamlessly integrate solar photovoltaic components into building structures, have garnered widespread attention for their aesthetic appeal and energy efficiency. However, the promotion of BIPV systems has also raised new fire safety concerns. This paper reviews recent fire incident cases and conducts risk identification for factors such as building and environmental risks, photovoltaic systems, electrical equipment, and safety protection. A fire risk assessment is performed using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate the overall fire safety of BIPV systems. Based on the assessment, corresponding safety design strategies are proposed to ensure the safety of buildings and occupants. The research results indicate that BIPV systems pose certain fire hazards, and that proper design and regulation are crucial to mitigate these risks.

Closed coal bunkers emerged as a novel form of coal storage for coal-fired power stations. Nevertheless, heat builds continually in the storage process because of the constant oxidation of coal and combined with the impact of a confined coal bunker environment, it is difficult for heat to dissipate, resulting in frequent coal bunker fires. Consequently, research on coal pile combustion characteristics is crucial to the design of coal bunker safety. The experimental platform was set up in this study to conduct combustion tests of various specifications, and the burning rate, flame height, flame temperature, and heat radiation flux were analyzed to identify the critical parameters impacting coal bunker safety. First, the maximum burning rate of coal heaps during steady burning was calculated, improving coal pile combustion theory and providing guidance for coal bunker design. Second, the maximum flame height was determined, which can provide an important design guide for coal bunker height designs. In addition, it was discovered that high temperatures in flames, smoke, and smoldering coal might cause coal bunker buildings to collapse, so future designs should strengthen coal bunker fire resistance and keep the coal pile away from the load-bearing structures to prevent collapse from excessive temperatures. Moreover, the diameter of coal piles has an influence on the heat flow. For this reason, a coal bunker’s design must consider the coal pile’s fire separation distance from the coal bunker and avoid large coal piles. Consequently, the study gives recommendations and support for planning coal bunker safety and enriches experimental data for coal pile fires.

In order to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality, the installed capacity of photovoltaic (PV) modules has been increasing rapidly. In particular, single-glass PV modules are widely deployed in both utility-scale and distributed PV power generation systems. However, single-glass modules are highly susceptible to internal faults (e.g., direct current arc faults and hotspot faults) and external fire sources (e.g., wildland fires and rooftop fires), which may lead to simultaneous burning of the modules and adjacent combustibles, thereby promoting large-scale fire spread and causing severe economic losses. In this study, a dedicated experimental platform was developed to systematically investigate the fire behavior of single-glass PV modules under exposure to a pool fire. Systematic fire experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of module inclination angle and tempered glass integrity on the burning process, molten dripping flame behavior, and temperature-rise characteristics of single-glass PV modules. The results show that the integrity of the front glass has a pronounced effect on the burning behavior. At the same inclination angle, cracked modules exhibit significantly faster fire growth and higher temperature-rise rates than intact modules, while also being more susceptible to rapid burn-through by the external fire, accompanied by the generation of numerous molten dripping flames. In addition, the module inclination angle has a significant influence on the fire behavior of PV modules. As the inclination angle increases, the fire development rate, temperature-rise rate, and average burning duration of dripping flames all display a non-monotonic trend of first increasing and then decreasing, reaching their maxima at an inclination angle of 15°. These findings provide a theoretical basis for the fire protection design and fire risk assessment of PV power generation systems and are of practical significance for enhancing their operational safety.

As rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems are increasingly deployed on taller buildings and across a wider range of building applications, localized overheating or initial fires caused by electrical faults, combustible roof-covering materials, or maintenance-related ignition sources may affect PV modules and contribute to subsequent fire spread over the rooftop system. In this study, a full-scale fire experiment was conducted on a flat-laid rooftop PV system using a nominal 100 kW n-heptane pan fire as a controlled localized external fire source to investigate the fire development and escalation mechanism of the system. The results show that the fire hazard was first and primarily concentrated in the confined under-panel space: the average cavity peak temperature of the ignited array reached 684.0 °C, with a local maximum of 853.4 °C, both significantly higher than the maximum upper-surface center temperature of 370.7 °C. The involvement of the waterproofing membrane in combustion was the key amplifying mechanism driving the transition from localized heating to a sustained high-temperature event; the average cavity temperature exceeded 500 °C after 234 s and remained above this threshold for approximately 201 s, with an average cavity heat accumulation index of 178.1 × 10³ °C·s. Compared with the lower upper-surface center measuring points, hazardous temperatures beneath the modules were reached earlier by 149, 193 and 247 s at the thresholds of 50, 100 and 200 °C, respectively. Under the tested configuration, these findings provide engineering insights for fire-risk identification, early monitoring, and fire-safe design of flat-laid rooftop PV systems in high-rise building applications.