Solar Foundation Engineering Services

Your solar project needs a solid foundation to support your panels through all weather. Polar Racking works closely with our engineering parter provide full-scope solar geotechnical services, from solar foundation design through solar foundation engineering, with all-weather design to suit your site’s conditions.

Our fully integrated multidisciplinary engineering services provide optimized and efficient solar racking and foundation design. This approach ensures the various disciplines work together to avoid redundancy and missed design constraints, producing optimal recommendations for your solar installation.

Polar Racking solar foundation engineering service ensures we thoroughly evaluate your site for relevant conditions and recommend a suitable all-weather solar foundation design. Our all-weather designs keep your infrastructure standing through anything from frosty Canadian winters to tropical humidity. As our specialized solar engineers and designers work together, you benefit from this close-knit team’s ability to recommend the best solar foundation design for your needs.

Benefits of Building Solar Foundation by Polar

Polar Racking, as the name suggests, has extensive cold-weather solar foundation engineering experience. Our frost-uplift design minimizes your risk as your foundation withstands shifting in deep-winter weather conditions. You get an all-weather design appropriate for your location’s shifts from scorching hot summers to frigidly cold winters, high humidity or dryness, windy and stormy conditions, and seismic shifts. Our extreme weather design experience supports foundations facing frosty Northern winters or wild tropical hurricanes.

You can benefit from Polar Racking’s solar foundation engineering service at a price that fits your budget. We will help you find the right balance between the best weather-resistant design for your conditions and the most economical solution so you get the best solar foundation design for your needs.

Polar solar foundation benefits include:

All-weather design

Cold weather experience

Frost uplift design

Minimize your project risk

Service for your budget

Solar Geotechnical Services

Our solar geotechnical services start with a geotechnical investigation. Polar Racking’s engineering partner performs an extensive site survey with material testing and laboratory testing to fully understand your soil type and compaction. This information helps us build a geotechnical report and select the most appropriate solar foundation design and type for your site’s conditions.

Then, our construction quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) analysis ensure your project is on track to give you a solid foundation. Geotechnical production testing helps us achieve this goal.

Our solar geotechnical partnership ensures a smooth transition between geotechnical site survey, solar foundation design, and construction, optimizing your project with suitable recommendations.

Geotechnical investigation

Material testing, laboratory testing

Solar foundation design

Construction QA/QC Analysis

Production Testing

Solar Foundation Design

Every solar installation is not the same: varying soil types and topography create construction and stability challenges. Polar builds four types of solar foundations, depending on the specific project’s needs. A site survey helps us select the best solar foundation, or combination of solar foundations, for your particular build.

Helical Pier

Helical piers are sometimes called helical anchors or helical piles. These cylindrical posts have a helix near the bottom to create a cone of soil above them when they reach the desired depth. Earth anchors the helical pier to resist uplift from wind, keeping the installation rooted firmly in the ground.

Thanks to their screw-like design, we can quickly and easily install helical piers with little disturbance to the surrounding soil. Our team can implement helical pier solar foundations in less-than-ideal weather conditions since there is no need for concrete. As well, the foundation is easily removable for reuse in another location.

We may recommend this type of foundation in environmentally sensitive areas requiring less-invasive construction and when the installation is temporary. Helical pier solar foundations are suitable for areas with high water tables or sandy, black, or clay soil since we install them at a shallower depth than other foundations.

Driven Post

Also called a post-driven ground-mount solar racking system, driven pile, or driven beam, these I-beams, H-beams, or C-channels are a common foundation type. We use a piledriver to push these beams directly into the earth.

These driven posts are most suitable in highly cohesive ground, such as clay, gravel, and dense sand with a low water table. The posts remain in place thanks to the soil’s friction. We may install different lengths of posts at different depths, depending on the area’s soil conditions, frost line, and other factors.

We may recommend driven posts for large-scale projects since they are quick to install, accurate, do not require cure time, and have a low cost at scale.

Ground Screw

Ground screws for solar foundations (sometimes called earth screws) have a threaded, pointed end that displaces smaller rocks during installation in rocky areas. Similar to helical piers, ground screws create a cone of soil, which resists lifting.

Ground screw installation also minimizes surrounding soil disturbance. We can install ground screws of varying lengths on one project, depending on the soil conditions and topography beneath a given panel.

Polar may recommend ground screws in areas where the topography varies and for various soil types.

Ballast

Ballast solar foundations sit atop the soil. We attach the racking to a poured or precast concrete block, and the block’s weight holds the installation in place.

This type of solar foundation is suitable in areas with access for large trucks to deliver precast blocks or equipment to pour concrete onsite. We may recommend ballast foundations in locations where we cannot penetrate the soil, for example, in a landfill where there is potential soil contamination, in a place with low soil cohesiveness, and in situations where someone may have to move the panels around. However, they may not be suitable for sloped or uneven areas, and we must consider soil erosion, settling, and heaving.

Solar Project Case Studies

Donoe Solar Ground Mount

BMR Energy (Virgin Group) lost much of its solar facility to Hurricane Irma. Polar Racking and PRI Engineering examined the initial design’s failures and designed resilient solar foundations to handle extreme weather with heavy wind loads, steep slopes, and variable ground conditions. The Donoe Solar Farm installation now provides 6.4 MW of solar power to St. Thomas’s population with stable foundations and an extreme weather design to withstand future storms.

Ramapoke College Solar Carport

Polar Racking and PRI Engineering partnered to install solar panel foundations at Ramapoke College in New Jersey. The installation now provides 3.5 MW of solar power to the school, helping it save on energy costs while meeting environmental sustainability goals.

Calgary Landfill Ground Mount

The city of Calgary, Alberta’s Shepard Landfill is an extensive land area with limited use due to a landfill’s typical soil contamination concerns. Officials invited Polar Racking and PRI Engineering to install foundations for the ground-mount solar panels on this otherwise vacant land. The installation now provides 3.3 MV of clean power to the municipality’s residents, saving energy costs, meeting environmental sustainability goals, and making use of land that would otherwise sit unused.

Request A Quote

Interested in one of our solar mounting systems? Contact us today to get a FREE quote and an initial layout. Fill out the form with a short description of your project and we will be in touch shortly.

For any questions, call us at 1-844-860-6722

Free quote and initial layout are available in two to four business days
We will present you with the most economical solar mounting solution
Our engineering team is on call to answer your technical questions
Our technical support team is available for onsite visits