An overview of floating PV worldwide
conference paper
Floating solar systems can represent a serious alternative to ground mounted solar systems. At present, the international market for floating PV is small compared to the total PV market, but expected to become a multi-billion market in the coming years. A main driver for the growth of the market for floating PV is the mitigation of land cost. Other drivers are the potential added benefits of deploying photovoltaics on water such as a lower module temperature and reflections from the water, leading to higher energy output. Covering hydropower lakes or drinking water reservoirs will decrease evaporation rates. At present, Japan and China are the two driving markets, with Japan hosting a large number of projects and China being home to a number of very large systems, with the largest over 100MWp. In Europe, the UK hosts the largest systems. The yearly installed capacity shows a quickly increasing trend from 3MWp in 2013 to more than 400 MWp in 2017. Research projects are being executed in Singapore, Malta and the Netherlands. Of 20 different available floating PV systems we assessed different properties that affect the energy output, packing density, survivability, ease of maintenance and installation speed. We see large differences in design philosophy between the systems.
Topics
TNO Identifier
843365
Source title
International Conference EU PVSEC for Photovoltaics Research, 24-28 September 2018, Brussels, Belgium
Collation
3 p.
Files
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