Advantages And Disadvantages of Floating Solar Systems

Advantages of floating Solar systems:

1. Rational utilization of land resources: comprehensive utilization rate of land can be improved by using lakes, mining subsidence areas and abandoned deep mines.  

 

2. Increased power generation: Water surface has cooling and mirror reflection functions for photovoltaic modules, and the power generation of the floating solar system/ floating solar structure is significantly higher than that of the ground photovoltaic system.  

 

3. Environmental protection: covering the solar panels on the water can reduce the evaporation of the water surface and inhibit the reproduction of algae in the water, which is conducive to the protection of water resources.

 

4. Little dust. Easy to clean. It can avoid the weed shadow shade.

 

Disadvantages of floating PV systems: 

1. Relatively huge difficulty in construction, operation and maintenance.

2. The equipment has high requirements for anti-corrosion and waterproof and PID resistance.

3. High cost of comprehensive development of the floating PV project.

4. Uncertainty exists in the way of declaration scale and land use policy.

 

Forms of water photovoltaic: 

1. Piling type (water depth ≤3m)

2. Floating type (water depth >3m)

1) Floating piles

2) Independent buoys

3) Standard buoys

4) Float tanks + steel walkway plates

 

Comparison of different forms (actual case data)

 

1. Basic information about floating solar systems project

The floating solar systems project was located in an artificial lake with a water area of about 330 mu, a water depth of about 5m and a water level difference of 0.5m. The module inclination angle is 23°, and the installed capacity is 8.5MW. It was connected to the grid in December 2015. It adopted the standard buoy, custom buoy, custom buoyancy box and a variety of floating body forms. Place on the shore of the booster, and combine the underwater cable and bridge with a high voltage line. 

 

2. Cost comparison

The cost of pile foundation is related to pile height, and the cost increases by about 0.15 yuan /W for each 1m increase in water depth.

 

3. Development trend

The existing water surface photovoltaic scale is small. The "fixed piling + fixed scaffolding" was mainly used in the shallow water area (within about 3m). The "fixed piling + tracking scaffolding" was used only in a small number of shallow water areas. 

 

The deep-water floating type (about 3-10 meters) is still in the demonstration stage, and the technology maturity needs to be improved. It is an important development direction of the future water surface photovoltaic.

 

The limits of deep water zones will be broken and the number of floating applications will be increased in the future.

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