Tesla Responds To Amazon’s Claims About Solar Panels Catching Fire

After Amazon added its disgruntled voice to those taking Tesla to task for solar panels catching fire, Elon Musk’s company has issued a statement. Amazon had previously blamed a rooftop fire at their Redlands, California, warehouse on one of Tesla’s green energy units.

Tesla’s official statement attempted to downplay the incident and emphasized its procedures for monitoring the panels.

“All 11 Amazon sites with solar from Tesla are generating energy and are proactively monitored and maintained,” read the statement Tesla sent to multiple outlets. “Last year, there was an isolated event that occurred in an inverter at one of the Amazon sites. Tesla worked collaboratively with Amazon to root cause the event and remediate. We also performed inspections at the other sites, which confirmed the integrity of the systems. As with all of our commercial solar installations, we continue to proactively monitor the systems to ensure they operate safely and reliably.”

Amazon declined to comment on the response to Business Insider but confirmed that they did not have any other projects with Tesla in the works. The e-commerce giant’s complaints followed a lawsuit from Walmart in which it claimed Tesla panels caused rooftop fires at seven locations. Shares of Tesla dropped 2% after this suit was filed.

“To this day, Tesla has not provided Walmart with the complete set of final ‘root cause’ analyses needed to identify the precise defects in its systems that caused all of the fires,” Walmart’s suit stated.

Tesla has yet to comment on these initial complaints from Walmart. A joint statement between the two companies seemed to suggest that they were working towards an out-of-court settlement.