We buy solar PV cable.

What PV wire and DC string cable are

PV wire is a single-conductor cable built for one job: carrying direct current in an exposed, wet, sunlit place. The insulation system is rated 1 kV or 2 kV, sunlight resistant and direct burial rated, and it is listed for the conditions a ground-mount array or a rooftop actually sees. USE-2 and RHW-2 appear in the same service, often as the same dual-rated cable with two sets of markings on one jacket.

Sizes are small by industrial standards. The string itself runs in 10 and 12 AWG, with 8 AWG where a run is long, and the conductor is stranded copper in every case. Larger single-conductor DC feeders leave the combiner and head for the inverter, and those reels carry most of the metal in a solar lot. A pallet of 12 AWG coils and a reel of large feeder are not the same offer.

• 10 and 12 AWG PV wire, 1 kV and 2 kV
• USE-2 and RHW-2, often dual rated
• 8 AWG string runs and larger DC feeders
• Copper, stranded, single conductor
• Black jackets, cut lengths and partial reels

Where solar surplus comes from in this region

Construction is the obvious source. An array is designed with a wire schedule, and the schedule is rarely exact: extra reels are ordered, some strings finish shorter than the drawing, and the balance goes back to a contractor yard instead of onto a warehouse shelf. Modules ship on time and wire arrives early, so the surplus exists before the array is ever energised. A schedule written for a large build can be out by a few hundred feet on a single string size, and that error is a reel.

Repowering is the quieter source. An older array replaces its modules and sometimes its inverters, and the DC cable that comes off the racks is often sound, just attached to equipment nobody is keeping. Decommissioning produces the same cable again, cut at the connectors and coiled. Projects that stall add a third: a build deferred after delivery leaves full reels wrapped, tagged and never unloaded. None of it is damaged. All of it is in the way.

Sunlight, water and what outdoor storage does

Solar cable is built to live outdoors, which is why a reel that has sat in the weather for a year is not automatically ruined. The jacket is formulated for ultraviolet exposure and the insulation for wet conditions, and the whole construction is expected to survive on a rack for decades. What the rating does not cover is mechanical damage, a crushed flange or long immersion in standing water.

Standing water is the real risk on a Houston yard. Water enters an open end, wicks along the strands and sits against bare copper, and the corrosion it causes runs further under the jacket than the eye expects. The outside of the reel can look sound while the first few feet are green. Cut ends, taped or bare, tell that story faster than any tag still wired to the flange.

A PV reel that has been under water since a flood is reviewed as a metal lot, not a cable lot, whatever the jacket print says.

Send the string list before the reels move

A solar lot is easier to review as a list than as a pile. Give the cable type, the AWG, the voltage rating and roughly how much is on each reel or coil. If the material came off a design, the wire schedule is the best document you have and it is worth photographing before the job files are archived and the engineer who wrote it has moved on.

Say where the cable has been stored and whether the ends are sealed. Inline connectors, where they are still fitted, identify the string and the module type, but they are cut off before the cable is reused, so they carry no value of their own. A reel kept indoors since the job closed reads very differently from one that has stood in a laydown yard. Photographs taken before the racks come down answer the questions that arrive later.

• What is printed on the jacket and the reel tag
• Voltage rating, AWG and conductor count
• Approximate footage left on each reel
• Whether the ends are sealed or open
• Where the reels sat since the job stopped