Evaluations of Wind Effect on PV Module by Non-uniform Mechanical Loads System and Mean-Surface Pressure Pattern

The issue of typhoons has received considerable critical attention since the associated strong winds generally damaged PV modules severely. Previous IEC standards examined the effect of static uniform-loads (IEC 61215-2:2016) or dynamic uniform-loads (IEC TS 62782:2016) on PV module in low wind-velocity, but overlooked the moment effect or non-uniform loads due to wind actions on PV module, especially in high wind-velocity. Therefore, the challenge is how to improve the current mechanical loads system to meet the test requirements due to strong wind such as typhoon’s action on PV module. This work has successfully developed a new test capacity named non-uniform mechanic loads (NUML) system, which owns eighteen (3x6) independent pneumatic cylinders with maximum loading up to ±12000 Pa (pressure load”+”, suction load”-“). NUML system can operate the different wind effect by the simulated data named mean surface-pressure pattern (MSPP) for PV module. All MSPPs can also be evaluated directly by wind-tunnel experiment and CFD simulation. Results of this study revealed that such severity wind-test for PV module strongly relied on the choices of major environmental factors such as wind velocity (V), wind direction angle (β) and inclined angle (α). In addition, the failures of the module and its fixtures, after NUML test, are closely related to the external forces such as MSPP (V, α, β).