At this time the U.S. solar industry is operating without solar specific structural consensus standards or codes to provide engineers, owners, manufacturers, developers, and contractors guidance on how to design and build solar photovoltaic (PV) structures. Design engineers and manufacturers have to rely on what they can interpret from the local building codes, or any literature they can find, to design these unique structures. The challenge with allowing a young industry to grow and mature under this type of model is that it results in a wide variety of interpretations of the codes and design literature that leads to a lack of reliability of many solar PV structures.To provide a more reliable and consistent approach to the design of solar PV structures the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) has through the Solar PV Structures Committee developed a Manual of Practice. This Manual will provide guidelines that engineers can use to rationally design solar PV structures for ground mounted PV, elevated PV, rooftop PV, and floating PV. The committee is made up of structural engineers, geotechnical engineers, contractors, tracker manufacturers, wind specialists, solar developers, and owners who are all working together to provide this guidance document.

• Course will award 1.0 hour of continuing education
• This course is Diamond Review approved in 49 States. NY does not accept hours from recordings.