Solar power arrays that float on water are becoming increasingly common in South-East Asia as the land available for the rapid expansion of renewable energy grows scarce. This floating approach may also be an option in other places where solar power鈥檚 large footprint is an issue.
According to an analysis by at Rystad Energy, a research firm based in Norway, there are currently 500 megawatts of floating solar panels installed in South-East Asia, accounting for about 2 per cent of all solar power there. More than a quarter of that comes from a floating on a reservoir in Indonesia that came online in November.
Floating solar capacity in the region is over the next few months as projects come online. By 2030, Chew projects floating installations could make up 10 per cent, or about 8 gigawatts, of South-East Asia鈥檚 total solar capacity.
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The strategy鈥檚 full potential is even greater. In Indonesia alone, Chew says there are around 21,000 square kilometres of inland water bodies. Covering 1 per cent of that area with floating solar panels could provide around 28 gigawatts of capacity, roughly double the current solar capacity in the UK.
Such installations are usually more expensive than building on land. But much of the land in the region is already spoken for by agricultural operations and dense cities, says Chew. And some of that extra cost could be offset by other benefits. Chew says floating panels have a higher output than panels on land because the water cools them off, and panels on reservoirs can tap into existing hydropower infrastructure.
Such 鈥渇loatovoltaics鈥� could prove valuable in other places, where covering land in solar panels is a growing political problem. at the Southern University of Technology and Science in China and his colleagues estimated that covering 30 per cent of the world鈥檚 reservoirs in floating solar panels could generate nearly 10,000 terawatt hours of power a year, double the electricity demand of the US. The researchers also found that floating solar panels would save huge volumes of water by reducing evaporative losses from the reservoirs. Solar panels can also float on the ocean, although present a challenge to keeping them operative.
However, while other researchers endorse floatovoltaics as a way to save space on land, they point out there are engineering and maintenance challenges, as well as remaining questions about the environmental and social impacts. For instance, at Cornell University in New York and his colleagues cautioned the , even as the due to climate change.
鈥淩eservoirs in South-East Asia are not aquatic wastelands,鈥� says McIntyre. 鈥淎s these new systems are constructed and go online, it is imperative to monitor their human and ecological impacts.鈥�
