Abstract
Floating solar technology is gaining significant interest among researchers and on a commercial scale. FSPV (Floating Solar Photovoltaic) plants are being installed on water bodies such as thermal power plant reservoirs, balancing reservoirs, lakes, upstream of dams, backwaters, etc, from a small scale to utility scales. While this technology is gaining momentum due to its inherent advantages over the ground mount/rooftop solar system, its design requires further improvements and development to attain maturity. Wind-induced drag loads dominate the FSPV design, which is installed in relatively small reservoirs. On the other hand, wind-induced drag, wave, and current loading becomes critical when it is installed in the dam’s upstream reservoir where the open water area is in the range of 10 square Km.
The present study investigates the experimental wind tunnel test results of the real-scale dummy solar panel assembly used for FSPV parks. The testing was carried out at the National Wind Tunnel Facility (NWTF), IIT Kanpur. The test assembly includes five dummy solar panels of 2456 mm × 1134 mm, mounted on HDPE floaters in a 4+1 configuration. One dummy panel was instrumented for wind load measurement. The instrumented dummy panel was relocated from one position to another to get the wind load for each configuration. The tests were carried out for worst-case wind incidence angle, i.e. wind hitting the solar panel from the bottom at wind speed ranging from 0 Km/hr to 200 Km/hr. Drag and lift loads were obtained using load cells mounted underneath the panels. These results are useful for validating the numerical model.
The safety of the FSPV lies more in designing the anchoring and mooring system, which relies on wind load calculation. Realistic numerical models are required for the correct estimation of the wind load on the utility-scale FSPV, which can only be ensured after validating the numerical model with the experimental results on real-scale assembly. These well-established computational models can further be used for various changes in the study for which repeated experiments are not viable.
