Session: 09-04-01: Floating Solar Energy 1

Paper Number: 129799

129799 - Experimental Investigation of Real Scale Floating Solar Panel Assembly in Wind Tunnel 

Floating solar technology is gaining much interest among researchers and on a commercial scale. FSPV (Floating Solar Photovoltaic) plants are being installed on the water body, 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, installed in relatively small reservoirs. On the other hand, wind-induced drag, wave & 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 current technical study investigates the experimental wind tunnel test results of the real-scale solar panel assembly used for FSPV parks and the numerical results of the assembly subjected to similar loading conditions. The testing has been carried out at the National Wind Tunnel Facility (NWTF), IIT Kanpur. The test assembly includes 5 dummy solar panels of 2456 mm x 1134 mm, mounted on HDPE floaters in 4+1 configuration. One solar panel was instrumented for wind load measurement. The instrumented solar 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 bottom for wind speed ranging from 10 Km/hr to 200 Km/hr. Drag & lift loads were obtained using load cells mounted underneath the panels. These results help establishing the numerical model.

The safety of the FSPV lies more in designing the anchoring & mooring system which relies on the wind load calculation. For the correct estimation of the wind load on the utility scale FSPV, realistic numerical models are required, which can only be ensured, post 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. Thus, a single panel configuration is modelled in ANSYS Space Claim, and the CFD simulation is performed, wind-induced drag & lift loads are obtained for one configuration only for validation. It is concluded that the experimental & numerical results are found to be congruent.

Presenting Author: Prince Arora Floatex Solar Private Limited

Presenting Author Biography: Prince Arora, currently working as a CTO in Floatex Solar Pvt Ltd., holds a Master of Technology (M.Tech, 2012-14) in Offshore Structural Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) along with a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech, 2008-12) in Civil Engineering. His master's thesis title is "Response and Stability Analysis of Tethers of Tension Leg Platform". Including in India and UAE, he has 10 years of experience in Oil & Gas and Ocean renewable energy with a wide range of projects, including fixed and floating offshore platforms, vertical axis wind turbines, Floating solar energy. Professional expertise includes structural analysis, hydrodynamic analysis, hydrostatic analysis, mooring analysis, intact and damage stability, process automation through various scripts, etc. His research area is offshore wind energy, floating solar energy, wind energy potential assessment, CFD simulations, time-domain simulation of OWT, dynamic instability investigation, etc. He is also pursuing a part-time Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
Currently, he is leading the EPC work of the world’s largest floating solar power plant in a dam reservoir, the 600 MW Omkareshwar Floating Solar power project, in Madya Pradesh, India. The current project involves lots of challenges in terms of typical topography, bathymetry, and water level variation among others

Authors:

Prince Arora Floatex Solar Private Limited
Badri Prasad Patel Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Suhail Ahmad Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Arvind Kumar Jain Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
C. S. Joe Joe Great Waters Maritime LLC