By: Stephen Chen
—– Introduction of the world’s largest floating solar panel
What’s going to be the most potential and efficient method to make energy? I would say the floating solar panel. As known as one of the most effective methods to produce electricity, It becomes more and more popular in Asia. Last year, in a historical event in China, the world’s largest floating solar plant entered operation so far with wind generation and battery storage at Dezhou Dingzhuang Floating Solar Farm.
As the largest floating solar panel 2022 in the world, Dezhou Dingzhuang Floating Solar Farm is considered to be the representative of new powers in China. Coming in at 320 MW, it is the biggest floating PV project brought online to date. Completed by Beijing electric company Huaneng Power International, the project is located in a reservoir in Shandong—an eastern province of China on the Yellow Sea. For example, 1MW is likely to equal the same amount of electricity consumed by 400-900 homes, that’s about 130 thousand to 300 thousand homes’ consumption of electricity.
Huaneng Company linked the reservoir-based floating solar with a 100MW wind farm and 8MWh of energy storage to form this huge wind and solar energy storage project. This kind of link with wind and storage is very useful and saves a lot of space. In addition, Huaneng company is willing to improve this floating solar panel plan to a higher level with more than 1000 MW. This creative and powerful project will lead us to advanced and wonderful lives.
The floating solar panel plays a key role in the energy transition, especially in Asia where it offers the chance to site generation on assets such as reservoirs in areas where available land is at a premium.
However, nothing is perfect. There are some weaknesses in this new technology. The places on which it works are often lakes. Therefore, the ecosystem in a lake is going to be impacted by the floating solar panel. Scientists are trying to solve the problem and improve it. Hope we can use solar energy efficiently with the help of floating solar panels in the future.