Floating Solar Power: Expanding Clean Energy Across Reservoirs

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Estimates suggest that to fully decarbonize the economy by 2050, the world might need to dedicate a portion of land ranging from a half to five percent to solar installations. Yet where space is limited or protected by strong environmental rules, deploying solar can spark debate and tensions. In some regions, officials weigh the tradeoffs between land use and climate goals, while others explore alternative sites with far less footprint.

One compelling option is floating photovoltaic systems. These installations sit on artificial bodies such as reservoirs or expansive shallow pools. Known as floating solar, they are still less common in the United States but are rapidly gaining traction elsewhere in the world, particularly across parts of Asia where new projects are expanding rapidly.

On August 17, 2022, the Operational Terrain Imager-2 aboard Landsat 9 captured a natural color image of a floating solar installation in a reservoir near Dezhou in China’s Shandong province. The project reached about 320 megawatts and stood among the largest floating systems globally in that year, illustrating how floating solar can scale to city-level decarbonization efforts.

solar panel reservoir in china Nature

Floating solar offers a set of advantages. Studies from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory indicate that the devices stay cooler in water, which can improve efficiency compared with land-based panels. They also reduce water evaporation and can limit algae growth by shading the water surface. In many cases reservoirs lie close to urban centers, making it simpler to feed electricity directly into the city grid rather than transporting power from distant solar farms.

However, experts caution that floating systems must be engineered to withstand waves and water dynamics. They often come with higher upfront costs than terrestrial setups and may require more frequent cleaning because biofilms and microbial activity can affect performance. If these systems inhabit natural water bodies, there can be implications for aquatic plants, fish, and other wildlife, depending on location and design choices.

A Nature article notes that globally the installed capacity for floating solar on terrestrial reservoirs stands at a modest size relative to conventional solar, yet reservoirs around the world, collectively covering vast areas, offer substantial opportunities for expansion. The researchers emphasized that deploying floating panels on roughly a quarter of the world’s reservoirs could unlock significant energy gains without sacrificing prime land for other uses.

floating solar panels biodisol

Another perspective is that multiplying floating capacity could deliver notable electricity gains. Estimates suggest that dedicating about ten percent of the world’s hydropower reservoirs to floating solar could yield thousands of gigawatts of potential electricity generation, a figure that dwarfs current fossil-fuel plant capacity at many sites. Analyses indicate that if roughly ten percent of the world’s reservoirs were equipped with floating solar, a meaningful share of electricity demand could be met by this approach.

In the United States, researchers have proposed that installing floating solar on about a quarter of the nation’s roughly 24,000 reservoirs could contribute a meaningful portion of the country’s total electricity output, illustrating how targeted deployment can complement existing solar and hydropower assets.

A NASA program project called POWER uses satellite-derived environmental data and modeling to help renewable energy planners identify optimal sites for solar installations, supporting the strategic placement of floating and fixed systems alike.

Reference work: Nature article from 2022 describing floating solar developments and capacities. Attribution: Nature; National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Landsat data; NASA POWER project.

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