Numerical Wind Tunnel Simulation of Wind Loads on a Solar Photovoltaic Power Generation Station

Aiming at the wind load evaluation in the mechanical structure design of solar photovoltaic power generation station with sun tracking, a numerical wind tunnel model was established based on the computational fluid dynamics theory and finite element method. The 8-level wind velocity was applied in the model considering the mal-condition of reef islands and Gobi desert where the solar photovoltaic power generation station usually installed. From the numerical simulation results, the influence of elevation angle of the solar cells on the wind load was presented. To decrease the maximum wind load on the power station, the gap between solar cells was proposed as air vent in this paper, which has been adopted in a prototype machine, and more than 20% of the equipment weight has been reduced.