You aren't going to wire 36 panels in series. The largest off grid pv charge controllers handle strings of up to 1000VDC. You create strings of a certain size and then start paralleling.
I don't think this setup uses microinvertersb because it is highly inefficient to charge a battery bank by first having ac power, convert to DC, them back to AC to run loads.
I highly doubt the person who was shocked was shocked from the DC side, more likely they touched an exposed 120v 15/20a circuit on the AC load side.
The phrase 'As primitive as a farm in Vermont' jumps out at me. These people have no idea what there talking about, any farmer would know how to test pH and NPK values of the soil and take tissue samples for analysis, there's a lot of data involved in farming, not to mention it being one of the few industries to utilize gentic modification.