I believe the 2023 code did away with any 10ft rule and refers to article 230 now. I.e. the PV disco must be outside or 'nearest the point of entrance' if inside.
See 705.10 regarding signage for firefighters. It's very vague, so it's up to you and your AHJ to make it work. In this regard I personally favor labeling the PV disconnect a service disconnect. Firefighters should know, because it's been this way for a hundred years, that buildings may have more than one service disconnect. So label it as an additional service disconnect and it's less confusing.
You have to figure that when securing utilities, firefighters are trained to open the service disconnect. There’s not a whole lot of training otherwise that tells us to open every adjacent disconnect. The placard is well intended but probably not going to get read too thoroughly during an incident. I try to label mine “PV SOLAR DISCONNECT.”
We need to do a better job at training people. As the world transitions to electrification, the risk has to be better understood. Examples being ESS systems, various versions of rapid shutdown, and so on.
Under the new code, exterior disconnects are a good thing, and our utility has caught up with that in the green book.
In the old days, at least where I’m at in California, we used to pull meters and cut service drops if we had to. All of that equipment got pulled a long time ago thankfully.
