As the development of solar PV plants, land for installation is becoming rare and expensive, thus solar PV is moving from land to water, just like what is happening in wind farm. More and more investors turned their eyes to fishpond, lake, reservoir, and even off shore area for opportunities.
Only in China, there is more than 90,000 square kilometers of lakes and around 86,000 artificial reservoirs with total areas of over 25,000 square kilometers which is with appropriate conditions for floating PV installation. This country could have 3 TW clean energy merely with only 20% of these water areas covered by solar PV modules.
Globally there is much bigger market for floating PV. According to market research institute, the Transparency Market Research(TMR), including floating solar PV, the compound annual growth rate of global floating power market is estimated to be around 6.5% from 2020 to 2030, and the market size will reach USD$565 billion by 2030.
However, development of floating PV is not easy because of many technical problems. Compared with conventional ground-mounted solar PV or rooftop distributed PV, floating PV requires high specifications and qualifications for most components of the system. Within all of these components, the support is particularly treated as the key for a floating system.
Different from the simple metal racks or tracker with mechanical rotating parts for land application, the floating support has to be light enough to float on surface of water but with enough intensity to support the PV modules above. Moreover, the structure stress caused by wind, wave and water flow has to be considered and carefully calculated. Not to mention the support has to be highly resistance to corrosion to ensure the lifetime durability in extremely humid environment. In the meantime, the cost of the support should be reduced and complied with requirements for lower levelized cost of electricity (LCOE).
Mibet Energy, a Chinese Fujian based rack and tracker supplier, honored provides to global customers with its latest G4N+ floating supporting system including floater, support leg, maintenance access and anchoring system. The entire Mibet’s MRac G4N+ floating system has successfully solved existed technical problems and concerns of floating support and brings out cost saving for investors to achieve lowest LCOE.
The MRac G4N+ floating support system, equipped with particularly designed floater of high density polyethylene (HDPE), is free of corrosion and environmental friendly. HDPE has very good resistance to UV radiation of sunshine and anti-aging properties and this ensures the durability of its 25 years of lifetime.
With different shape design, G4N+ consists a series of HDPE components including floaters for module installation, support legs, walkway deployment, and connection parts like plastic bolts and nuts, clamps, anchoring block holders, and etc. With all of these flexible components, customer can easily combine and assemble floating PV system in most situation.
Considering different situation in which the floating PV requires fixing or floating modes, or even both, Mibet provides varies anchoring schemes for customers’ choices. Based on specific water area, Mibet will help to design the overall layout and all details for different parts of the plant. The layout design will be simulated and tested on Mibet’s own software simulation system and all errors could be corrected before deployment.
Not like many other suppliers in floating support area which out most of their sourcing manufacturing and assembly work, Mibet obtains its own manufacturing factory and inventory. With decade of close cooperation with upstream vendors, Mibet provides flexible and quick response to customer’s order and requirements. And also benefit from the module design of its floater, Mibet can achieve high shipment efficiency due to space saving.
Mibet holds the idea to work close with customers and provide deep customized products and services to optimize the performance of customer’s PV plant. Not matter whether the inverter is string type or centralized one, whether the cable connection on water or under, or the width of maintenance road, and other requirements, customized design will be provided with best efficiency and efforts. The company intends to contribute even 10% more efforts for only 1% performance lift.
So far, the Mibet’s MRac Floating system has passed a series of professional tests and examinations, including but not limited, TUV raw material test, TUV UV test, TUV wind tunnel test, drinking water test, Product Structure Performance Test, SGS Flame Retardant Test, and etc. And a series important certificates were granted by authorizations, like:
Shadowed with the pressure of continuous cost cut-off, the PV support is becoming more and more important in a solar PV system, especially for a floating system. The launching of MRac G4N+ system by Mibet provides a cost competitive solution for floating PV support which will make Mibet take lead in this promising area.