Session: 09-07-02: Floating Solar Energy II

Submission Number: 156928

Estimation of Wind Load on Floating Solar Array 

Floating solar technology is exponentially scaling up worldwide. Floating solar projects (under different phases) has now reached more than 10 GW globally in last few years. Research interest among the researchers is also growing rapidly. Application of FSPV started with installation of 1-5 MWp FSPV farm on small lakes or artificial man-made reservoirs with benign wave condition, however the same has now reached to the installation of 500-1000 MWp FSPV farm on large dam reservoirs with harsh wave condition. With the increasing installation scale, design complexity increases due to larger and natural water body with highly undulated reservoir bed, increasing fetch causing higher wave height and current speed. Hence the parameters affecting the design plays crucial role while correctly estimating the wind, wave and current induced loads on floating arrays.  Also as witnessed in past in case of Kyocera’s 13.7 MW FSPV project at Yamakura Dam, incorrect estimation of wind loads may cause catastrophic failures of FPVs.

Few researchers have presented the analytical method to evaluate the wind loads on floating solar array. Shielding effect may not be properly considered in the analytical methods. As the flow pattern changes and thereby the pressure is modified for different configuration. Hence comprehensive CFD analysis is required. Evaluation of the wind loads numerically can provide realistic loads. The standard practice to estimate the wind load is to perform computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study of the entire structure in any finite volume-based solver such as ANSYS Fluent, which is time consuming analysis as the size of the object under consideration becomes larger due to millions of mesh counts involved in bigger structure. The current technical study focuses on estimating the wind load on floating solar array numerically using steady state RANS based CFD approach. While floating PV array size becomes larger the computational cost increases exponentially. For utility scale project such as 7MW PV array may take months to provide the CFD result depending upon the computational power of the machine. Hence, either simplified 3D model or analytical methods have been used in past to get the loads of such arrays. Both of this case further needs to be strengthened.

For the present study, 16 numbers of HDPE floater mounted panels are considered in one column for the CFD study. Panel inclination angle is kept at 5 degrees. The parameters such as number of columns, wind direction are changed to analyse the interference or shielding effect among panels.  Such configuration has been modelled in ANSYS space claim. The 3D model is then used in ANSYS Fluent for CFD simulation. Inlet, outlet and wall boundary conditions are specified in ANSYS. The result of this sub-array has been extrapolated for the utility scale floating solar array utilising the shielding coefficient obtained from the study. Shielding coefficient used is based on the extensive CFD study.

Presenting Author: Prince Arora Floatex Solar Private Limited

Presenting Author Biography: Prince is a renewable energy professional