Design of floating photovoltaic structures in coastal waters

Abstract

As global warming starts to become a serious concern, more of the industry is turning towards utilizing greener and renewable energy. Among those, solar energy proves to be a relatively reliable source of energy, however its deployment requires large amount of land space. Very Large Floating Structures are one of the very promising solutions to the problem of land scarcity, especially for small coastal countries. The development of VLFS started advancing since two decades ago and have made contributions in many fields[1]. The design of VLFS continues to be refined and improved for different purposes. This paper attempts to study the effect of the material properties of a pontoon-type hinged VLFS (solar farm) in coastal waters on wave modification and the structure of the VLFS itself. The VLFS is scaled down to lab experimental size and modelled with a white oil doped PDMS floating cover. The stiffness of the covers will be varied by adjusting the ratio of curing agent used in each cover. The rheological properties of the covers will be tested using DMA via small amplitude oscillatory shear test. The experiments will attempt to study the effects of stiffness of cover on the amplitude of cover, the wave attenuation of cover, and the damping effect of the cover. The different effect on waves between a whole cover and a perforated cover will also be studied. The result of the study is as follow. The stiffness of cover has an inverse relation with the wave amplitude, the higher the stiffness, the lower the wave amplitude. The stiffness of cover does not have significant effect on wave attenuation, which is much more dependent on wave period. The stiffness of cover does not affect the damping effects of the cover by much, again it depends more on the wave period. The perforated cover lowers the deviation of wave amplitude and slightly increases the attenuation coefficient.