Solar power arrays are often exposed to the worst weather that the planet can dish out, including hurricane force winds that can gust up to 200 miles per hour on the U.S. Eastern seaboard and on islands like Hawaii and Guam. Whether the solar panels are mounted on the roof, in a stationary ground array or in moving trackers, calculating wind load is a major factor in the system design.
Wind is one of the most frequent causes of damage to solar arrays, said several industry officials. In Spain, in the middle of the last decade, several large dual-axis solar trackers failed as a result of wind, according to Dan Shugar, the CEO of NEXTracker, based in Fremont, CA. "But horizontal trackers as a category have been very reliable since then, so the solar industry converged on the horizontal track as the best practical way to get energy gain, avoiding all the steel it would take to protect a dual-axis," he said.
Designing To Withstand High Winds
Wind deflection on solar trackers may be the most complicated design calculation in crafting the product since the tracker parts move in a variety of directions simultaneously. "If you don't have a mitigation system, such as a torsion limiter or dampers, the wind can make an array oscillate wildly," noted John Williamson, director of engineering at Array Technologies, based in Albuquerque.
