Offshore Floating Solar PV Projects

While early floating PV projects were typically located on landlocked water bodies such as lakes and reservoirs, organizations have recently started looking more into installing plants on offshore waters. Although this entails much greater technical challenges, such as withstanding heavy swells and overcoming saltwater corrosion, it also opens vast new areas for floating PV, potentially also in combination with aquaculture. These benefits are driving the growth of a market that is expected to hit $30 billion by 2030, up from $2.55 billion in 2021.

This paper, prepared for the Solarplaza Summit Floating PV 2022 - taking place in Amsterdam on September 20 - looks at the state of play of this novel energy generation concept and highlights several promising pilot projects and some early best practices.