Floating Solar Panels Vision of The Future

Solar power companies in Southeast Asian that are competing for land with agriculture, industry and expanding populations have found an innovative alternative: placing floating panels in lakes, dams, reservoirs and the sea. Floating solar panels, an invention of its own kind is ready to add a new page in the history.

The platform has to be “more robust” than systems in reservoirs or lakes to withstand tougher conditions on the open sea, and to overcome barnacles that may grow on it. Despite these challenges, floating solar systems are growing quickly in Asia alongside those on the ground and on roofs.

It is great to know that such a kind of creation is another step to clean energy. The cost-effective prototype of floating and rotating solar panels is installed on the lake of Colignola in Italy where sunrays bouncing on the surface of panels can be collected for the production of electricity.

Rosa- Clot, a professor at Florence, and his team are very excited about their new invention, which is attracting many international buyers because of floating flower-petal-like panels. He proudly expressed his feelings about his new project by saying, “You are standing on a photovoltaic floating plant which tracks the sun. It’s the first platform of its kind in the world!”

While floating panels are more expensive to install, they are up to 16 percent more efficient because the water’s cooling effect helps reduce thermal losses and extend their life. With such an amazing design and international attention, they now look forward to revolutionizing solar power industry.

The standard solar plants have many limitations because they capture lots of valuable agriculture land, cover up the entire buildings as well as much energy is lost in overheating. The floating plants have resolved such issues.

Colignola costs approximately 48,000 euros ($ 63,000) with an estimated price of around 1600 euros per KW including installation. The flat panels are winged by reflectors and sit on raft-like structures which are anchored to the lake bed with a pylon.

Southeast Asia is particularly well suited for floating panels because of the scarcity of land and because they can be easily installed in the region’s many hydropower dams, where they can use existing transmission systems.

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