Design plan for photovoltaic panel layout on steep slopes in mountainous areas

Which slope is suitable for PV power plant installation?

Hillslope areas contain a large portion of land which is suitable for large-scale PV installations (Fig. 1) (Kim and Park, 2021, Yang et al., 2019), and there is a wide range of acceptable slopes for PV power plant installation (from 5 to 11.3°) (Anwarzai and Nagasaka, 2017, Charabi and Gastli, 2011, Irena, 2013, Yushchenko et al., 2018).

Does a photovoltaic panel reduce runoff and sediment in a slope?

The impact of a photovoltaic (PV) panel on runoff and sediment in a slope was tested. The key impact of the PV panel is preventing soil detachment by raindrop impacts. The PV panel slope produced 27 %−63 % less soil erosion than the control slope. The PV panel delayed runoff start time under rainfall with heavy rainfall intensities.

What is the slope gradient of a PV power plant?

The slope gradient of the experiment slopes is about 8.7%, which is within the range of normal slope for PV power plants (Anwarzai and Nagasaka, 2017, Irena, 2013, Yushchenko et al., 2018).

What is the optimum design of ground-mounted PV power plants?

A new methodology for an optimum design of ground-mounted PV power plants. The 3V × 8 configuration is the best option in relation to the total energy captured. The proposed solution increases the energy a 32% in relation to the current one. The 3V × 8 configuration is the cheapest one.

What is the difference between a control slope and a PV panel?

Under different rainfall intensities, the total runoff of the PV panel slope was 0.7–4.0 % lower than that of the control slope (Table 2). The hydrographs of the two slopes were also quite close (see Fig. 5). The differences in peak discharge rates between the two slopes were lower than 3.5% (Table 2).

Does a ground-mounted photovoltaic power plant have a fixed tilt angle?

A ground-mounted photovoltaic power plant comprises a large number of components such as: photovoltaic modules, mounting systems, inverters, power transformer. Therefore its optimization may have different approaches. In this paper, the mounting system with a fixed tilt angle has been studied.