Kyoto City’s largest hillside PV Plant has started to generate electricity. The 9.9 MW plant will generate 11 GWh/yr, equivalent to the electricity used by approximately 2,500 local homes. The plant uses 39,600 250W photovoltaic modules installed on 13 hectares on a hilly site that slopes from 183 to 77 meters.

The site had virtually no flat land, imposing difficult terrain conditions on the mounting systems. Because stable design is so important to PV arrays, Powerstone, as the exclusive mounting structure provider, had to carefully engineer the structures’ stability on the sloping hills, as well as the generating capacity of the modules. Based on the amount of slope (from 10—30 degrees), Powerstone created different designs with different module layouts, which were then verified by professional calculations. The mounting structures Powerstone designed not only improved system stability on the slopes, but also improved module power generation as much as possible, saving time and construction costs.