Design And Testing Of Wind Deflectors For
Roof-mounted Solar Panels
Author(s)
G. V. Kudav, Y. M. Panta & M. Yatsco
Abstract
The amount of solar energy that can be produced in the US and throughout the
world has seen an unprecedented potential to fulfill growing energy demand.
Solar panels can be installed on the ground or on the roof of a building. Roof
mounted solar panels could experience occasional high wind loads especially lift
and drag forces. Solar panels are bolted directly onto the roof and are secured
using ballasts as counter weights against the wind loads. We propose the use of
efficient wind deflectors designed and strategically placed in front of the panels
as reported here. The deflectors under study were proven to minimize the wind
loads on solar panels, ensuring the safety of civilians and surrounding property.
The present study utilizes wind tunnel testing and computational simulation
using the commercial computational fluid dynamics software ANSYS Fluent for
a steady, turbulent wind flow (standard k-å model) over an inclined rooftop-solar
panel. The study shows promising results in the prediction of the wind forces for
an effectively designed wind management system. As specified earlier, results
were compared and validated by both wind tunnel experiments and
computational simulations for a meaningful conclusion. Solar panels with
various aspect ratios for high incoming wind speeds in the range 40–50 m/s (i.e.
90–110 mph) with several angles of attack were modeled and simulated. We
report the analysis of high wind loads on the solar panels leading to the design of
an optimized wind deflector to counter such loads. It was concluded that an
elliptically profiled wind deflector, with uniformly spaced short fins that were
positioned before the tilted panels, was proven to minimize the high wind loads
by as much as half, compared to the wind loads without the deflector.
Keywords: rooftop solar panels, solar panel deflectors, wind loads, ballast.
Keywords
rooftop solar panels, solar panel deflectors, wind loads, ballast.
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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