One very fast-growing market segment in the solar industry is “Floating PV” on reservoirs, lakes, and increasingly also in near-shore areas. Once implemented, these multi-million-dollar assets need to be properly monitored for their positioning on water, to instantly detect drifts or a possible sinking of the float.
SERIS has developed a system which uses an inertial measurement unit to track motions of floating platforms along the six degrees of freedom. The features of the system are:
- Monitoring of translational movement in three perpendicular axes (surge, heave, sway);
- Monitoring of rotational movement about three perpendicular axes (roll, pitch, yaw);
- Additionally, acceleration rates are monitored for the various parameters, for extreme cases.
Readings are processed by software designed in LabVIEW and displayed in numerical and graphical representation in SERIS’ Control Centre, allowing visualisation of the platform movements in real time as well as triggering an alarm system in case of emergencies. Such a system protects the assets by instantaneously evaluating if a floating setup is, for example, partially sinking due to a puncture in a buoyancy element, or if the anchoring system is damaged causing the setup to drift away. Additionally, conditions of extreme motion are detected and can serve as a warning to maintenance personnel, so that platforms are not accessed during those times.
