General Design Procedures for Airport-Based Solar Photovoltaic Systems
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Date
2017-08-12
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
MDPI
Abstract
: A source of large surface areas for solar photovoltaic (PV) farms that has been largely
overlooked in the 13,000 United States of America (U.S.) airports. This paper hopes to enable PV
deployments in most airports by providing an approach to overcome the three primary challenges
identified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA): (1) reflectivity and glare; (2) radar
interference; and (3) physical penetration of airspace. First, these challenges and precautions that
must be adhered to for safe PV projects deployment at airports are reviewed and summarized. Since
one of the core concerns for PV and airport symbiosis is solar panel reflectivity, and because this data
is largely estimated, a controlled experiment is conducted to determine worst-case values of front
panel surface reflectivity and compare them to theoretical calculations. Then a general approach
to implement solar PV systems in an airport is outlined and this approach is applied to a case
study airport. The available land was found to be over 570 acres, which would generate more than
39,000% of the actual annual power demand of the existing airport. The results are discussed while
considering the scaling potential of airport-based PV systems throughout the U.S.
Description
open access journal review article
Keywords
Airport, Photovoltaic, Solar energy, Federal aviation administration, Economics
Citation
Anurag, A. et.al. (2017).General Design Procedures for Airport-Based Solar Photovoltaic Systems. Energies, 10 (1194), p 1-19