PV Grounding Clip Materials and Coating Guide

Two pv grounding clips that look identical on the bench can have a fifteen-year gap in service life, and almost all of that gap sits in two decisions: which grade was used, and how the surface was prepared before coating.

This guide covers both, in the order that matters.

Base material

Stainless steel or copper alloy with a hardened penetrating tooth is the starting point. The grades normally offered are:

• AISI 304 stainless
• AISI 316 for coastal
• copper alloy for high-conductivity paths
• galvanised steel for low-duty

Reading those options properly matters more than it sounds. A lower grade is not automatically a worse part — it is a part with a shorter life in a given environment. The question is always “shorter than what, and in which environment”.

Corrosion: the mechanism you are designing against

Two things happen to this product outdoors, and they are different problems:

• Atmospheric corrosion, driven by time-of-wetness, chloride and pollutant load. Coastal air is the aggressive case; the practical threshold many operators use is about 5 km from salt water.
• Galvanic corrosion, which appears where two different metals are in contact in the presence of moisture. On this product the risk sits at bolted and crimped interfaces.

The second is the one buyers underestimate, because it can be introduced by a change that looks like an improvement — using a stainless fastener on an aluminium body, for example, without an isolating washer.

Surface treatment options

passivated stainless or plated copper alloy; the penetrating tooth must stay bare to bite through anodising

How to specify them so they mean something:

1. State a measured requirement, not a process name. Thickness or mass per unit area, with the test method.
2. State where it is measured. A single reading in the middle of a flat face says nothing about a cut edge or a bend.
3. State the acceptance rule for damage. Some handling marks are inevitable; the specification should say which ones are rejects.
4. State the standard the coating must satisfy, and ask for the test record with the shipment.

Service life in different environments

A practical way to think about the options:

• Inland, dry, sheltered — the base specification (AISI 304 stainless) is normally sufficient for a fifteen-year design life.
• Inland, exposed, wet — specify the coating rather than the grade: passivated stainless or plated copper alloy.
• Coastal, within about 5 km of salt water — expect to move up a grade (galvanised steel for low-duty) and to specify a salt spray test with a defined duration.
• Chemical, industrial or de-icing exposure — treat the site as coastal plus, and get the environment written into the specification rather than left to the supplier to guess.

Evidence to ask for

Claims about materials and coatings are cheap; evidence is not. Ask for:

1. Mill certificate or grade declaration for the base material.
2. Coating thickness or mass measurements per batch, with the test method.
3. Salt spray test report where the product is specified for a corrosive environment.
4. Where relevant to this product: bonding resistance test; penetration depth check; salt spray 1000 h.

The material-related failures to design out

• High bonding resistance — a tooth that is too shallow to pierce the anodised layer, giving a path that reads fine on a multimeter and fails under fault current
• Tooth flattened on installation — hardening skipped, so the tooth deforms instead of penetrating

Note that none of these are visible at goods-in. They are design and specification failures that become service failures, which is exactly why the material decision belongs in the RFQ rather than in a follow-up email.

Related: the pv grounding clip specification guide shows how to write these requirements into a standard RFQ format, and the inspection checklist shows how to verify them on a batch.