A Study on the Hydrodynamics and Coupling Effects of the Multibody Floating Photovoltaic (FPV) Concept

Abstract

Floating photovoltaics (FPVs) have been developed rapidly in the past few years and will gradually become the “third pillar” of the photovoltaic industry. To better understand the performance of FPV floaters, this paper provides an in-depth study on the hydrodynamics of a single FPV module and the coupling effects of multiple modules. The results show that a conventional frequency domain approach, which includes both panel and Morison models, may not necessarily provide realistic results. Even after adding an additional damping matrix for the floaters based on empirical values from the oil and gas (O&G) industry, and a free surface damping model between the pontoons, the responses were still not convincing. Therefore, a nonlinear time-domain hydrodynamic solver was introduced. Further studies and comparisons were performed to understand the behavior of the module, and some updated damping coefficients were summarized. Thereafter, a multibody hydrodynamic model was built to check the coupling effects. With the additional damping surface on the gap surface among the modules, some attempts were made to derive reasonable results, when the model test was not available. Preliminary studies of both a scaled-down system (with 9 modules and mooring lines) and a full-scale system (with 90 modules, buoys, and mooring systems) were also investigated, and some initial results were demonstrated.