floating PV

Chemitek has developed new cleaning products for floating PV arrays. The Portuguese company says it has tested and confirmed them to be safe for animals and vegetation around such systems.

Germany-based Sinn Power plans to build a 1.8 MW floating PV system with vertically deployed solar modules. Construction is expected to start this summer.

Researchers in China have compared the performance of catenary and taut mooring systems for offshore floating PV systems. They found that the taut system offers a higher degree of reliability in shallow water environments with severe tidal variations.

Researchers in China have conducted a numerical study on the wind sensitivity of offshore floating solar plants. They have tested six row-arrangements of panels and have found an optimal system configuration that is reportedly less sensitive to wind direction.

A team of scientists from China and the United States studied ways to optimize floating photovoltaics for offshore use. It found that the robustness of the systems was influenced by the size and number of platforms, as well as the types of connections between platforms.

The Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) has confirmed that a 24 MW floating hydro-solar hybrid project has commenced commercial operations in northeastern Thailand. The installation is part of wider plans to develop 16 floating solar projects with a combined capacity of 2,725 MW.

A consortium involving 8.2 Renewable Energy Experts Hamburg and its partners has completed a feasibility assessment for a floating PV system on four reservoirs of different hydropower plants in Uganda.

SolarDuck, Green Arrow Capital, and New Developments have agreed to develop an offshore hybrid project featuring 120 MWp of PV and 420 MW of wind in Calabria, Italy.

An international research team has produced a comprehensive overview of more than 300 works of published literature on floating PV, spanning 2013 to 2022. The scientists laid out the benefits and challenges of the technology and pointed to gaps that should be filled with future studies.

A comparison between monofacial and bifacial PV systems in Ghana showed how changes in system parameters can affect the bifacial gains. The researchers found that changing the albedo of a land-based system can increase the bifacial gain from 5.25% to 14.5%.