Floating Solar Could Be a Lifeline for Land-Scarce Nations Facing Energy Crises
Germany’s Power Prices Soar 30% on Strong Demand, Low Wind Speeds Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and… Floating solar farms could be significantly more efficient than solar farms on land thanks to the natural cooling effects of seawater, according to new findings from a comparative study conducted by researchers from the National Taipei University of Technology (NTUT) in Taiwan.
The floating solar panels used in the study produced 12 percent more energy than the on-land models, with potentially huge implications for global energy security and decarbonization pathways.
Thestudy, published this month in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, compared the life cycles of an offshore floating photovoltaic (OFPV) in the waters off of Taiwan to a solar farm on the island.
The study found that the OFPV system generated about 12 percent more energy in its lifetime thanks to the natural cooling effects of the seawater, which increased the system’s efficiency.
Moreover, it found that OFPV also enhanced emission reductions.
“Because of this higher energy output, they also achieve greater carbon emission reductions,” study co-author Ching-Feng Chen, PhD, was recentlyquotedby Interesting Engineering.
“In simple terms, even though both systems use similar technology, placing solar panels on water can make them more effective,” Chen went on to say.
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This could have enormous implications for Taiwan, which is currently experiencing anexistential energy crisis.
Taiwan’s energy grid is totally isolated and strained, supporting a population of 23 million as well as an enormous and energy-intensive tech manufacturing sector with extremely limited land and energy resources.
On top of that, Taiwan’s energy sector also faces major security threats from China and is simultaneously being battered by a still-unfolding energy crisis driven by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
At present, Taiwan is 99 percent dependent on imported natural gas.
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