Closed profiles significantly enhance the safety of ground-mounted solar installations and reduce economic risks. In its March 2026 issue, “photovoltaik” magazine explored the topic “When clamps cause stress”; as part of the article, we at MKG GÖBEL presented our approach to solving the problem.
Module breakage in glass-glass modules represents a costly type of damage and has increased dramatically in solar parks in recent years. It leads to expert assessments, repair costs, often legal disputes, and reduces long-term energy yields. Although wind and snow loads are defined in accordance with standards, such damage still occurs. In structural analysis, permissible deflections and stability considerations are evidently interpreted quite differently by various providers.
In the construction of ground-mounted systems, open profiles were long considered a good and cost-effective solution due to their low material costs. They performed well when modules were more robust and structural spans were smaller. However, due to increasingly larger tables, thinner glass-glass modules, and overall economic pressures, these empirical values can no longer be applied to modern designs.
Open profiles tend to twist, particularly under eccentric loads and localized load introduction, transferring some of the forces onto the modules, which are not designed to bear them. The result is unintended load paths that can lead to glass breakage and/or micro-stresses.
This often leads to prolonged efforts to identify the root cause, disputes among stakeholders, costly remediation, premature module replacement, and significant losses in return, potentially jeopardizing long-term investments.
MKG Göbel relies on closed steel profiles in its GMS systems, preventing torsional deformation of the beams via the modules. These torsionally rigid profiles resist twisting, keep loads within the profile, and stabilize the modules at the contact points instead of placing additional stress on them. Returns remain stable, financial losses are avoided, and the investment remains viable in the long term without the need for retrofitting. This approach represents a paradigm shift, moving the focus from short-term cost savings to long-term safety.
