Floating Solar Farms Are Taking The World’s Reservoirs By Storm

Photovoltaic solar panels are wonderful things, capable of capturing mere light and turning it into useful electricity. They’re often installed on residential and commercial rooftops for offsetting energy use at the source.


However, for grid-scale generation, they’re usually deployed in huge farms on tracts of land in areas that receive plenty of direct sunlight. These requirements can often put solar farms in conflict with farm-farms — the sunlight that is good for solar panels is also good for growing plants, specifically those we grow for food.


One of the more interesting ideas, however, is to create solar arrays that float on water. Unlike some of the wackier ideas out there, this one comes with some genuinely interesting engineering benefits, too!



Not As Crazy As It Sounds


Floating solar arrays have better efficiency than their land-based counterparts by virtue of the fact that the water keeps the cells cooler. (Adobe Stock photo.)

“Floatovoltaics”, as they like to be known, come with significant engineering benefits relative to typical land-based installations.  One of the primary benefits is that of cooling. Solar panels, like many other electrical devices, benefit from being kept in a nice cool temperature range. Of course, being exposed to the sun means that, when generating electricity, solar panels are in fact forced into operating at elevated temperatures. With the average commercially-available photovoltaic panel hitting a peak efficiency of only around 20%, and only roughly 1,000 W/m2 available from the sun, solar panels are already up against it when it comes to producing decent amounts of electricity. The estimated efficiency benefit from floating a solar array on water is on the order of 5-6% floating solar farms taking world reservoirs storm