Floating Solar Panels: A Sea-Based Solution That Also Reduces Global Temperatures
Posted on February 16, 2022
Many environmentalists love and dislike solar panels at the same time. While it reduces dependence on coal energy to produce electricity, solar panels have the biggest potential to become a huge pollutant without proper recycling plants to process discarded and aged solar panels in the next two decades. Thankfully, progress on the recycling front is gaining progress, but there’s another issue: land consumption
The biggest private and government solar energy plants claim acres of land that farming and other essential sustainable processes can use. In addition, the lack of cultivation can prematurely age and render the land obsolete for agriculture in the future. Good thing that scientists in the University of California had discovered an alternate way to install solar farms — on ocean water.
The scientists discovered that a solar panel floating on a stabilized buoy along the sun-ridden shores of nearby beaches and water bodies can solve the solar panel landmass problem. Buoys help stabilize the solar panels, and small animals can perch on the buoys to rest while hunting for food. In addition, every solar panel homeowner in Golden, CO, understands that solar panels contribute massively to residential roof cooling. This same effect can become a huge help to oceans that evaporate at a fast rate because of global warming.
Learn more about floating solar panels in this post from Popular Science.
Rebecca Hernandez, an associate professor of earth system science and ecology at the University of California, Davis, has been studying the benefits of floating solar and its potential environmental impacts. “It’s land-sparing in many cases,” Hernandez tells Popular Science. “We found that three of the sites we were looking at, they had intentionally sited floating solar on water because they ran out of room for land [solar].”
Another benefit to floating solar, Hernandez says, is the natural cooling effect of water. Solar panels work more efficiently in colder temperatures because of water’s evaporative cooling effect, Hernandez says. Liquid zaps heat away from surface water when it escapes as vapor, which chills the water down even more. Floating solar is estimated to be up to 15 percent more efficient than land-based solar.
The environmental impacts of floating solar are still a bit of a mystery, Hernandez says. There’s potential for the plastic floats the panels sit on to degrade over time and possibly negatively impact a body of water, she adds, but more research will be needed.
“What we’re looking at is how floating solar impacts water quality,” Hernandez says. “We’re looking at things like water temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, total algae and we’re trying to see how the floating array impacts those important parameters.”
Some floating solar arrays are placed on bodies of water where animals live, such as stormwater runoff ponds. However, Hernandez has seen animals who now share their home with floating solar adapt rather quickly according to these solar arrays. She says she’s seen birds stand on the floats while they hunt for fish and otters use the floats to hide.
“We get to watch birds swoop right over the array,” Hernandez says. “I was afraid birds would be flying into the panels because they think they look so much like water, but the remarkable thing is that the birds are really adapting this stuff.”
There are many other places where floating solar could be deployed. Ideally, floating solar could be placed near existing hydroelectric plants, which would allow the facility to produce electricity from two sources. A project in South Korea started testing a 41 megawatt floating solar project near a hydroelectric dam last year.
“The advantage is that obviously if you have a hydroelectric plant, you have the infrastructure to send the electricity somewhere,” David Sedlak, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, tells Popular Science. “The downside is sometimes these hydroelectric reservoirs are used for recreation. I don’t know how much of a reservoir you want to cover if part of the reason that it’s supported by the public is that they can go boating or fishing there.” (Continue reading here to learn more)
