More companies floating idea of water-based solar panels
An expanse of blue solar panels stretches across part of the Yamakura Dam reservoir in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture.
In two years, if construction goes as planned, 50,904 panels will float atop the reservoir, generating an estimated 16,170 megawatt hours annually, enough electricity to power almost 5,000 homes, according to Kyocera, the company building the solar plant.
The project, once completed, will be the largest installation of its kind in the world. But floating solar arrays are becoming more popular, with installations already operating in Australia and the United States, and more planned or under construction.
The interest is driven in part by growth in the solar market as the cost of the technology has dropped quickly.
Floating solar arrays — often referred to as “floatovoltaics,” a term trademarked by one company — also have advantages over solar plants on land, their proponents say. Renting or buying land is more expensive, and there are fewer regulations for structures built on reservoirs, water treatment ponds and other bodies of water not used for recreation. Unlike most land-based solar plants, floating arrays can also be hidden from public view, a factor in the nonprofit Sonoma Clean Power Co.’s decision to pursue the technology.
“Sonoma County boasts some of the most beautiful rolling hills, and people don’t want to see them covered by solar panels,” said Rebecca Simonson, a power analyst for the renewable energy developer, which has signed purchasing agreements for floating solar arrays to be built on six treated water ponds in the county. The solar panels, she said, would not be visible from the road.
The floating arrays have other assets. They help keep water from evaporating, making the technology attractive in droughtplagued areas, and restrict algae blooms. And they are more efficient than land-based panels, because water cools the panels.
“The efficiencies are what motivated us to look at this,” said Rajesh Nellore, the chief executive of Infratech Industries, which has completed the first section of a floating solar plant in Jamestown, Australia, that will eventually cover five water treatment basins. The installation, which went into operation last year, is constructed so that it generates up to 57 percent more energy than a rooftop solar plant.
The panels are specially coated to prevent corrosion, and set on a tracking system that moves them to maximize sunlight during the course of a day.
The company is working on a similar project in Holtville, a small city in Southern California, which has suffered from years of drought.
Nellore notes that each floating solar project comes with its own engineering challenges. Floating panels can face stiffer wind than land-based arrays. But he said the biggest obstacle was convincing government water agencies that the technology served their interests.
“It’s limited by what incentives there are and what the government wants,” Nellore said. He noted that in Los Angeles, the Water Department covered a reservoir with $34.5 million worth of black plastic balls to slow evaporation; floating solar panels might have served the same purpose and also generated energy.
Kyocera, for its part, turned to floating panels because solar power has become so popular in Japan that big tracts of land for typical panel setups are hard to come by, said a spokeswoman, Natsuki Doi.
The Far Niente winery in Oakville, Calif., was an early adopter of floating solar panels, placing 994 on pontoons over an irrigation pond in 2008. Greg Allen, a winemaker at Far Niente who is a mechanical engineer by training, said the company was interested in solar power and wanted to eliminate 100 percent of their energy costs.
Utility rebates and tax credits helped defray some of the $4.2 million cost for the floating array, which took 2 1/2 years to design and build, and another 1,302 solar panels installed on land. The system is expected to pay for itself by 2020 or sooner, Allen said.
“We were nervous about a lot of things when we got into the project,” Allen said. But putting the panels on water saved vineyard space, and the floating system, combined with a solar array on land, generates up to 477 kilowatts of electricity at peak production.
At least one other winery has followed suit, and Allen said Far Niente had received visitors from India, China, Singapore and New South Wales who are interested in the technology.
Inhabitants of the pond seem unperturbed, he added.
“The fish are happy, the frogs are happy, the ducks came back,” he said. “It’s a very healthy pond.”