When considering building a solar plant, it will face relatively complex working environment, such as high/low temperature, humidity, salt spray, heavy sand and other harsh environments. And they can test the reliability and environmental adaptability of the whole PV system.

Since a growing number of PV plants are being built on water, desert, and in coastal areas, such environment will cause serious consequences on equipment within the system; such as the distribution box, mounting, and inverters.

In this article we’ve analyzed the impact of salt spray and high humidity environments on the operation of solar plants and highlight some solutions.

How salt spray and high humidity environment affect solar plants?

Salt spray contains a large amount of chloride ions, which can easily penetrate the protective layer of a metal surface and cause an electrochemical reaction with the contact metal causing a product to fail. Solar power stations built along the coast are susceptible to the effects of high salinity and humid air. Take solar racking as an example, the metal mounting equipment will be corroded and thus impact the stability and even cause huge  loss.

How to choose solar racking with protective ability?

The equipment chosen needs to have strict anti-corrosion and protection levels. It’s recommended to select reliable PV mounting structure or solar racking with higher protection level and anti-corrosion designs than in other areas. Usually, hot-dip galvanized surface treatment is a common way of anti-corrosion, According to the standard, the thickness of the galvanized film in different areas is different. The more severe the salt spray environment, the thicker the film thickness.

Additionally, the solar mounting structure or pile ground mounting system needs to pass temperature and humidity tests and corrosion resistance tests. It can be seen that using the salt spray testing machine to create artificial simulated salt spray environmental conditions to assess the corrosion resistance of metal brackets. Find the relevant certification on this in your area and require tests when choose a solar racking supplier.

Antaisolar pays attention to the stability of PV plants and conduct strict quality control on the anti-corrosion of solar mounting system. In-house laboratory offers salt spray testing to further confirm the reliability under such harsh environments. Check out for more at: https://www.antaisolar.com/production_d13