FLOATING BUZZ
Egat plans to open the world’s largest buoyant solar farm in June this year atop a reservoir in Ubon Ratchathani.
State-run Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) expects to operate a 45-megawatt floating solar farm it claims to be the largest in the world in Ubon Ratchathani in June after a delay caused by the pandemic.
Egat signed a contract with B.Grimm Power Plc, which will serve as an engineering, procurement and construction firm to develop photovoltaic panels worth 842 million baht on Sirindhorn Dam, where an Egat hydropower plant is operating.
Power generation on a water surface requires 450 rai of land, equivalent to an on-ground solar farm.
The facility was originally scheduled for operation in December last year, but the launch was postponed due to the pandemic.
Chatchai Mawong, Egat’s director for hydro and renewable energy power plant development, said construction is now 82% complete. Workers began installing the first lot of floating solar panels in December and are speeding up installation.
The floating solar farm is designed to be a hybrid system, working in tandem with 36MW of hydropower generation to increase optimisation capacity.
Under the 2018 National Power Development Plan, Egat is committed to building more floating solar farms on all nine of its dams nationwide over the next 20 years, with combined capacity of 2,725MW. It is also planning to adopt a modern energy management and energy storage systems, crucial to store electricity produced by solar panels.
Egat is building 415-metre natural walkways at all its reservoirs to be further developed into new tourist attractions.