Solar panels on flat on the ground

[dan_b]

Why have they done this? I realise it's not a "solar freakin' roadways" level con, but surely this can't be a good way of installing solar farms?

https://electrek.co/2022/12/12/texas-so ... he-ground/

[Caesium]

They make mention of a cleaning robot so I guess it's to make it easier to clean - at night a small army of what must basically be robotic vacuum cleaners are set loose on it? And being flat means they can reach every inch of it.

Guess they decided keeping them clean would improve output more than being an optimal angle to the sun

[Eabadger]

They seem to have some logic re hurricanes build time ect
Also less directional
Will not work very well in winter I expect
My tilting arays have prooved to work well in our location near flat in summer near vertical winter

[nowty]

PVGIS gives a flat panel a yearly yield of 94% that of a 35 degree sloped one (in Texas) and they may well need more power in summer for Aircon.

[smegal]

This is an interesting idea. There will be some output losses vs angled modules, but the cost of supports, additional land etc make the calculation more interesting. Especially when they are claiming that the MW per acre is halved. Given how low cost PV modules are nowadays, this does potentially make sense. My worry would be if a module in the centre of this installation got damaged, it'd be awkward to replace as the modules are all structurally wired together, whereas conventional ground mounted modules are pretty easily accessible.

Using a PVSOL model of my location that I'd set up for my install and modified the figures.

Orientation 180 degree inclination 35 degree, 916 kWh per kWp (free standing)
Orientation 180 degree inclination 0 degree, 753 kWh per kWp (roof integrated, no ventilation)

I make that ~18% lower output, which isn't the end of the world vs the lower cost of installation. This would be even more interesting on a southern facing hillside.

[Stan]

I think that you meant acres per MW smegal.
Got to hand it to them, they seem to be the first to do this on an industrial scale and avoiding all those pesky shadows. Only time will tell if nature holds a problem which they have not thought of.
I do pass a farmhouse where an assortment of about 30 different PV panels have been ‘thrown’ on the grass on a very slight slope but with gaps between them. Grass must be a problem there.

[dan_b]

Any concerns about heat, or ventilation on the panels with them screwed into the ground like htat?
Wonder how resilient they will be down there to being walked on by animals or humans, or other such things?

[nowty]

Any concerns about heat, or ventilation on the panels with them screwed into the ground like that?

The article says,

He also addressed concerns about high temperatures in the same interview:

I did a fatal flaw analysis on the idea. The only fatal flaw of concern that I had personally was temperature. And so once I proved the temperature performance of max cell temperature of the module, I was satisfied. I happened to live in Phoenix which is one of the highest temperature places on the planet. And it happened to get to 118 degrees (47.8 C) outside when I was running our first plant in 2019. And sure enough, the module cell temperatures don’t even approach maximum cell temperature. And I said: That’s the answer.

[Marcus]

I guess latitude of arizona is near enough to the tropics (30° N?) That winter sun is fairly high anyway, and on overcast days flat on the ground should work well.

I have discovered (accidentally) that 250w panels can survive being knocked to the ground, trodden on and sat on by 60kg sheep without damage, both face up and face down although I'm reluctant to repeat the experiment.

My worry would be rodents chewing the wires.