China News Service, Beijing, October 26. Title: Airport photovoltaic technology solves the problem. How to transform from energy consumer to clean energy producer
Author Zhang Su Yan Han
Xiamen Xiang'an International Airport is under construction. The building photovoltaic system in the corridor and cargo area has been officially connected to the grid. The 56,000 square meters of photovoltaic roof is equivalent to eight standard football fields;
Xi'an Xianyang International Airport T5 Terminal, on the roof of its comprehensive transportation center and parking building, a 1.15 MW integrated building photovoltaic system allows the roof to continue to generate electricity while assuming the enclosure function...
The reporter recently interviewed the relevant R&D team and learned that the technology has solved the problem and helped the integration of "transportation + photovoltaics" move from demonstration exploration to large-scale popularization. Airports are transforming from energy consumers to clean energy producers.
Safety is the "lifeline"
Airports are large energy consumers and natural power generation carriers.
Some analysts say that facilities such as terminals, concourses, cargo areas, and transportation centers have large-span roofs. At the same time, the airport's peak power consumption overlaps with the peak of sunshine. Airports are one of the most ideal application places for architectural photovoltaics.
Lin Borong, a professor at the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University, previously pointed out that airports have great potential for large-scale application of renewable energy such as photovoltaics. Flexible technologies such as energy storage and energy storage can make airport energy demand elastic, cut power consumption peaks, reduce grid supply pressure, and cope with the temporal and spatial uncertainty of large amounts of renewable energy supply.
Safety is the “lifeline” of civil aviation. In 2024, the China Civil Airports Association released guidelines for the planning and design of photovoltaic facilities at civil airports. This group standard regulates aspects such as planning and site selection, solar resource assessment, photovoltaic power generation, access systems, photovoltaic consumption, civil structures, and safety risk assessment.
The strong reflection of photovoltaic panels in sunlight may interfere with the pilot's vision during critical moments of takeoff and landing. Cases from the Netherlands, the United States and other places show that photovoltaic modules have the risk of surface glare, which may affect the safety of airport operations.
Solve the glare problem
How to solve the problem of surface glare of photovoltaic modules, reduce the risk of module falling off, and improve the roof load and wind resistance has become a key to the application of photovoltaic in airports.
Zhu Xiaogang, deputy director of the National Solar Photovoltaic Product Quality Inspection and Testing Center, said in an interview that to better integrate new energy and airport operations and construction, special components must be available.
"The photovoltaic industry can use technological innovation to provide anti-glare treatment to photovoltaic glass to solve the strong reflection of photovoltaic panels in the sun." Zhu Xiaogang said.
It is known that the Xiamen Xiang'an International Airport project uses customized anti-glare components to strictly control the average specular reflectivity to an extremely low level of 0.40%, eliminating optical interference to flight safety from the source. The head of the R&D team from Longi Green Energy said that through special processes to treat the component surface, high-brightness specular reflection is converted into low-intensity diffuse reflection, and the loss of power generation efficiency is controlled to a negligible range.
Xi'an Xianyang International Airport Terminal 5 provides another route. The photovoltaic system was designed and constructed simultaneously during the hub's new construction phase to avoid interference to operations caused by later installations.
Passed several technical hurdles
Official guidance issued states that by 2027, the installed capacity of non-fossil energy power generation along transportation infrastructure will be no less than 5 million kilowatts. According to industry insiders, with the continuous optimization of photovoltaic technology and the maturity of anti-glare technology, photovoltaics will play an even more important role in the green transformation of airports in the future.
"Photovoltaic products will make greater efforts in green aspects, especially green airport construction and green transportation." Zhu Xiaogang said.
In the view of R&D personnel, the large-scale implementation of airport photovoltaics relies not on simple stacking of components, but on a deep understanding of the scenario. Taking Xiang'an International Airport as an example, the relevant person in charge of LONGi Optoelectronics said that a project must pass at least four passes.
First, the geographical conditions of the airport place stringent requirements on the long-term stability of the support foundation and component structure. Secondly, strong typhoons occur frequently along the coast, so it is necessary to calculate the wind resistance design according to the local basic wind pressure, and perform special corrosion-resistant treatment on the connecting parts to cope with the high salt spray environment.
At the same time, the roof of the corridor is a two-way curved surface, and the conventional arrangement method cannot be applied. The construction team used building information modeling and three-dimensional laser scanning technology to measure the roof shape and then determine the bracket positioning and installation angle point by point. In addition, in response to the different scenes in the corridor, cargo area and flight area, the array layout needs to be finely adjusted according to regional classification.
Experts say that the "safety card" of anti-glare not only fills a gap in the industry, but also eliminates the airport's worries in pursuing a low-carbon path. The civil aviation-level verification experience accumulated by airport photovoltaics such as anti-glare, wind resistance, and salt spray resistance will be migrated to broader transportation energy integration scenarios, benefiting more regions.
