Abstract: In design of a floating PV power station, the accuracy of its environmental loads assessment is directly related to the safety and cost of its anchorage system. The industrial regulations available cannot give a convincing estimation of such loads due to the large number of floating PV array modules, different supporting structures, different layout modes, and the increasing number of the arrays. This paper develops a numerical method based on multi-scale analysis to predict wind loads, current loads, and wave loads. The geometric model of the array is partly simplified to limit the number of grid elements to 250 million on the basis of numerical investigation and verification to make large-scale numerical calculations possible. Sub-areas with different row and column numbers are selected from the floating array for mutual comparison and confirmation; variations in the loads on each component with the rows and columns of the array are analyzed. The prediction of the loads on the whole array is given based on analysis. The results show that the upstream components produce a shielding effect on the downstream ones, and a wind load secondary peak is formed in the fifth row windward. The loads over the central area of an array basically tend to be stable; evident differences occur in the distributions of wind and current loads over a column. This study solves the problem of how to calculate floating PV power stations with multi-scale, large-scale and direct modeling, and helps improve their anchorage design.

Key words: floating array, environmental load, numerical simulation, multi-scale analysis, large-scale numerical calculation