Floating PV Becomes Part and Parcel in Renewable Energy Sector

Solar modules could be installed on the rooftop, a plot of land, or basically anywhere else where they are anchored to something solid. To beat climate change, our electricity mix is going to embrace more and more renewable energy to take over fossil fuels. People are looking for places whose land space is limited, so water-bound solar may be the next frontier.

Floating solar projects have thrived for nearly a decade, but they became much more prominent in recent years. The basic idea is to attach solar modules to plastic floaters which then drift on the water. These floating solar arrays are typically placed on man-made bodies of water, such as a town's water reservoir, an irrigation reservoir, a water treatment facility.

After several years of study, they found that floating solar energy has the following advantages:

1. Reducing the evaporation of water. Especially in the desert area where water evaporation is a very much serious problem. So FPV could help to solve such kind of problem.

2. Cooling solar panels will increase the solar panel efficiency by almost 10%. And they are easier to maintain for project OM.

3. There are many other places where floating solar could be deployed. Ideally, floating solar could be placed near existing hydroelectric plants, which would allow the facility to produce electricity from two sources.  

Floating solar energy can also exist on the ocean. The Singapore-based solar energy provider Sunseap deployed this technology last year in bays where panels will be relatively protected from large waves and other harsh weather conditions. The conditions on the open ocean would likely be much too tumultuous for such a solar array. So far, the plan seems to be working quite well. 

Floating solar is still a new way of obtaining solar power compared with the land-based panels we're used to. It appears to have a lot of potential in areas where land for solar farms is scarce or there is simply an abundance of water. The more solar panels we install on the ground, on rooftops or even on the seas, the less we'll be reliant on fossil fuels.