[RE-wrenches] Strategies for hurricane resistant solar arrays?

[Darren Anderson]

In light of Hurricane Matthew and the loss of some of our PV systems on South Coast of Haiti (despite being designed for 120 - 150mph winds), I’d be interested to hear of any strategies being used for making hurricane-resistant solar arrays. The maximum wind speed that most commercially available racking systems seem to provide is 130 – 150mph, but in many cases it seems the racking survives okay anyway while the glass is blown right out of the module frames.

Are there any modules rated for higher than 2400 Pascals of wind loading (which seems to be the norm)? I recall seeing a Mitsubishi module a few years back that had an additional frame member running across the back of the module. Would that provide extra wind load protection?

Would using small solar modules with less surface area be a useful strategy? (We typically use standard 60-cell modules.)

Can some sort of wind break or shield be designed into the frame to take the wind load off the solar modules themselves? (Many of our systems are on tilt-frames on flat concrete roofs so that back of the array is exposed.)

Any thoughts/advice/experience in this area would be much appreciated. Thanks.
_______________________
Darren Anderson | Project Manager
Solar Electric Light Fund | www.SELF.org<http://www.SELF.org/>
mobile:            +1-778-887-8291
head office:   +1-202-234-7265
skype:              darren.anderson.self

ENERGY IS A HUMAN RIGHTTM

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