Floating solar

The Chinese inverter company said the dam-hosted 58.5 MW project in northeastern Thailand was connected to the grid this month.

With land-use concerns on the rise, large-scale solar projects are increasingly being built on everything from landfill sites to water reservoirs. Here’s an overview of the state of the art.

The project will be built in Brăila county, southern Romania, at a cost of approximately $42.6 million. Hidroelectrica also wants to build several floating solar plants, totaling 5 MW, at some of its hydropower facilities.

A Norwegian consortium led by Scatec is planning to build a hybrid hydropower-floating PV plant at an unspecified location in West Africa. Building both facilities simultaneously will help its developers define a series of parameters for proper sizing, optimization and design, and set a benchmark for future projects of this kind.

Oceans of Energy is planning to deploy a 3 MW off-shore floating PV array in the North Sea.

Developers have until September 30 to lodge their interest to install grid-connected floating solar plants on the water reservoir surface at Salaulim, Amthanem, Anjunem, and Chapoli Dams in the Indian state of Goa. Their scope of work also includes assessing the floating solar potential at each of these locations.

Dutch start-up SolarDuck has secured approval-in-principle for its floating offshore platforms. Its 64 kW pilot project on the inshore water of the Netherlands’ widest river was validated by Bureau Veritas.

The state-run energy company has commissioned a 25 MW plant on the reservoir at its Simhadri thermal power station, in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The installation features more than 100,000 solar modules.

Scientists in Bangladesh have evaluated how a 50 MW floating PV plant could be integrated with the 230 MW Karnafuli Hydroelectric Power Station, located at the Kaptai Dam on the Karnaphuli River. They found that the two energy sources can be perfectly optimized and that PV can compensate for the reservoir’s shortage of water storage during the winter season while hydropower can compensate for the poor yields of the floating array during the monsoon season.

South-East Asia’s biggest floating PV installation is under construction by Masdar and Indonesian energy company PT PJB. The two companies secured a PPA for the project with state electricity company Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) in January 2020. The agreed tariff is $0.0581/kWh.