Utility-scale solar projects are designed to deliver reliable power for decades. But even well-designed projects must account for considerations that can affect construction schedules, energy production, long-term performance and project economics.
Some challenges emerge with a weather forecast. Others are hidden beneath the surface or appear after construction, when operational realities begin to test decisions made years earlier.
Here are five challenges that can haunt utility-scale solar projects—and how thoughtful engineering and project planning can help manage them.
1. Hail: The Potential for Module Damage and Delayed Response
Few weather events create more concern for utility-scale solar than hail.
Large hailstones can cause module glass breakage, cell cracking, downtime and costly repairs. For owners, insurers and other project stakeholders, however, the concern goes beyond physical damage. A critical question is whether a site can move its modules into a defensive position before severe hail arrives.
That makes hail resilience both an engineering and financial consideration. Project stakeholders increasingly need to understand not only how equipment is designed to improve hail resilience, but also how reliably a mitigation strategy can respond when conditions change.
Automated hail response provides one approach. ARRAY SmarTrack® Hail Alert Response uses third-party weather data to identify a high-probability hail event and initiate movement to a selected defensive position. ARRAY DuraTrack Hail XP™ pairs automated response with a tracking range of up to 77 degrees, which can help reduce the impact of energy transferred to module glass during a hail event. The appropriate stow angle and response strategy depend on project conditions and engineering assumptions.
Reliability matters just as much as stow angle. A hail-mitigation strategy depends on the tracker reaching its intended position when needed. Event documentation can also provide owners and insurers with information about how a site responded during a storm.
Hail resilience isn’t simply about reacting to damage. It’s about designing a response strategy before the storm arrives.
2. Wind: Protecting Equipment While Limiting Unnecessary Energy Loss
Wind presents a different challenge: protecting equipment while limiting unnecessary production losses.
High winds place structural loads on trackers and modules. Without an appropriate wind-mitigation strategy, those loads can contribute to tracker instability, module damage and other mechanical concerns.
Moving trackers into a protective stow position helps manage wind-induced loads, but stowing also changes module orientation away from optimal solar tracking. The longer and more extensively a site remains stowed, the greater the potential production tradeoff.
That makes how and when a tracker responds to wind an important design consideration.
Active wind-stow strategies typically use inputs such as wind measurements, controls and commands to initiate stow, although active-stow designs vary by system architecture. ARRAY’s patented passive wind-stow technology response takes a different approach. ARRAY Wind XP™ responds mechanically to the wind conditions each tracker row experiences. Wind XP’s primary passive wind response does not require grid power, batteries, anemometers or a site-wide command to initiate movement. Affected rows can move toward a protective stow position, while less-affected rows may continue tracking when conditions permit.
ARRAY’s wind-stow energy-loss analysis, validated by DNV, found passive-stow strategies showed lower modeled energy losses than the active-stow strategies included in the study. Results vary by site conditions, wind direction, tracker configuration, wind behavior and operating assumptions.
That distinction matters because weather resilience isn’t only about protecting equipment during an event. The operating strategy can also influence how much energy a project produces over time.
Wind mitigation should account for both structural protection and the potential production consequences of unnecessary stowing.
3. Snow: Seasonal Production Losses and Structural Loading Considerations
Snow may not receive the same attention as hail or high winds, but at projects in cold-weather regions, it can create recurring operational challenges.
Accumulated snow can cover module surfaces and reduce energy production. Snow loading can also increase structural demands on modules, trackers and foundations. Those considerations can influence both how a project operates during winter weather and how it is designed before construction begins.
The challenge isn’t simply surviving a snowfall. It’s maintaining predictable production throughout repeated seasonal cycles year after year.
Tracker positioning can be part of that strategy. ARRAY SmarTrack® Automated Snow Response uses onsite snow-depth sensors and the existing site SCADA system to identify snow accumulation and automatically move compatible ARRAY trackers toward a high-tilt position. The higher angle is designed to encourage snow shedding, reduce accumulation and help limit production losses caused by covered module surfaces.
Snow-response strategies can also affect project design. Where project-specific engineering supports it, reducing expected snow loads may help reduce structural requirements such as the number of foundations needed for snow-load design. Actual requirements depend on project conditions and engineering analysis.
Snow resilience starts before the first snowfall. Tracker behavior, structural design and operating strategy all play a role in how a project performs through winter.
4. Terrain and Ground Conditions: The Potential for Costly Construction Surprises
Some of the most expensive surprises in solar aren’t found in the weather forecast. They’re found in the land itself.
Steep slopes, rolling terrain and irregular topography can create challenges long before construction begins. Grading, earthwork, foundation requirements and permitting constraints can all affect project costs and schedules.
Rocky ground, soft or expansive soils, high water tables and pile refusal can complicate foundation selection and installation. If those conditions aren’t understood early, teams may face redesign, additional material, rework or schedule impacts in the field.
The industry’s response is increasingly focused on designing around actual site conditions rather than assuming every site should conform to the same tracker and foundation configuration.
ARRAY OmniTrack®, for example, can accommodate up to 2 degrees of pile-to-pile slope change, helping the tracker follow more of a site’s natural north-south terrain and potentially reduce grading requirements.
Foundation selection matters, too. The ARRAY Atlas™ Suite provides different foundation-to-tracker configurations for different subsurface conditions. ARRAY Atlas I supports driven-pile configurations, while ARRAY Atlas II pairs the tracker interface with helical piles or ground screws for challenging ground conditions. Final foundation selection depends on project-specific geotechnical and engineering requirements.
The larger lesson isn’t that one technology solves every difficult site. It’s that terrain and geotechnical conditions should inform tracker and foundation decisions early enough to reduce surprises later.
Working with the land rather than forcing the land to fit a predetermined design can help reduce civil, foundation and execution uncertainty.
5. Design Complexity: A Challenge That Compounds Across the Project Lifecycle
Some challenges end when the storm passes. Complexity can remain for the life of the project.
A solar project can perform well in a model and still encounter significant challenges in the field. Design decisions related to component count, installation sequencing, alignment, tolerances, tooling and access can affect construction schedules, budgets and long-term maintainability.
Those decisions continue to matter after commissioning.
Over a project’s operating life, component failures, replacement requirements, maintenance labor and system accessibility influence uptime and operating expenses. Complexity introduced during design or construction can become a recurring operational burden.
That’s why constructability and lifecycle simplicity deserve consideration alongside upfront equipment cost.
ARRAY DuraTrack® reflects an engineered-simplicity approach that reduces the number of components and maintenance points in the tracker architecture. Its rotating gear drive and drivelines require no driveline or bearing lubrication, and the current DuraTrack configuration requires no scheduled maintenance.
Installation choices can reduce complexity as well. ARRAY FastMount is designed to simplify module attachment by reducing tooling and eliminating drilling into torque tubes. ARRAY testing found that FastMount reduced module installation time by more than 44% compared with ARRAY’s thru-bolt mount.
These aren’t simply installation conveniences. At utility scale, repeated tasks, additional components and small sources of rework can multiply across thousands of modules and decades of operation.
Designing complexity out of a project early can help reduce the number of problems teams have to manage later.
The Real Fear: Uncertainty
Hail can damage modules. Wind creates a tradeoff between protection and production. Snow can affect structural loads and energy generation. Difficult terrain and ground conditions can complicate construction. And unnecessary complexity can add cost and maintenance exposure throughout a project’s life.
Each challenge is different, but they share a common consequence: uncertainty. No single technology can eliminate every project concern. The stronger approach is to understand those factors early and make design, technology and operating decisions that help manage them throughout the project lifecycle.
That can mean preparing trackers to respond to severe weather, designing around actual terrain and soil conditions, simplifying construction or reducing long-term maintenance requirements. The specific solution will vary by project.
But the goal remains consistent: reduce uncertainty, protect production and support stronger project economics over the life of the asset.
Planning for the challenges ahead?
Every utility-scale solar project brings a different combination of weather, terrain, construction and operational considerations. ARRAY Technologies works with project teams to evaluate site conditions and identify tracker, foundation and software solutions designed around their project requirements.
Click here for other articles by this author