Characteristics of Wind Forces on A Photovoltaic Array in Field Measurements

Abstract

Solar power generation has been expanding as one of the non-fossil fuel energy systems in recent years. The weight of photovoltaic arrays is very light therefore wind load is the dominant load for this kind of structure. Generally wind resistant design is performed according to JIS C 8955. However outside the scope of JIS is the tilt angle of 10 degrees which is favorable in terms of efficiency, so a number of studies have been carried out on the wind forces acting on photovoltaic arrays. Most of these studies are based on wind tunnel experiments or computational fluid dynamics. These methods are available to estimate the wind loads comprehensively. However it is important to verify the results with these methods by comparing with the phenomenon in the fields. Therefore this paper shows the characteristics of wind forces acting on a photovoltaic array in field measurements. This data shows that there is good correlation with the results of wind tunnel experiments. The data also shows the wind pressure fields in typical cases.