All Times ET
Keywords: Solar-specific design load, Extreme value theory, Storm-based estimation, Mean Recurrence Interval
It is crucial that solar panels be built to withstand severe weather. Snow loads, which are the downward force induced by accumulated snow on a structure’s roof have long been a primary building design consideration. However, little work has been done to determine the unique dynamics of snow on solar panels. Given the heat-absorbing property and steep angle solar panels are mounted, snow melts within days on panels. This shedding phenomenon limits the amount of time snow can accumulate on the panel. This is a critical structural difference compared to traditional roofing systems which assume that accumulated snow persists on the roof for a long period. This paper introduces a “storm-based” adaption of the block-maxima approach that aims to evaluate short-term rather than annual accumulations of ground snow load. To do this, we mimic the shedding phenomena of the snow accumulation process on solar panels by defining and extracting storm-level accumulations of ground snow load and fitting extreme value distributions to the extracted observations. The results show a much lower design load for solar panels compared to other classes of structures.