First floating solar farm powers up in the UK

Eight hundred solar panels, mounted atop plastic floats have been installed on a reservoir at the Sheeplands Farm in Berkshire. The $400,000+ project is the first of its kind in the United Kingdom, and is expected to provide the property with a new means of green energy production.

The floating solar panel farm comes from French company Ciel et Terre, which has also set the technology up on quarry lakes, irrigation canals, tailing ponds, and more. Altogether, the company operates and maintains 55 solar power plants and is actively expanding worldwide.

Once the build was complete, the owner of Sheeplands Farm set up a company called Floating Solar UK, to distribute the technology to the rest of the UK.

Farm owner Mark Bennett said to the BBC, “We are a fourth-generation farm so we have had to diversify, because it's hard…This green energy [provides] another revenue stream.”

For those curious, Bennett is using Ciel et Terre's modular Hydrelio system which, according to the company’s site, has a 30-year lifetime. Ciel et Terre manages all aspects of the development process for these types of projects, including the design, engineering, financing, legal, construction, operation, and maintenance services. This ensures that the technology they provide their customers with operates at peak efficiency.

“Thanks to the cooling effect of water on PV panels, our systems produce more energy than land-based systems of a similar size,” said the company.

Bennett hopes his story sparks an interest in the benefits of the technology throughout the rest of the UK. “We are speaking to big utility companies, to agricultural companies — anyone with an unused body of water,” he said in a quote from the Telegraph. “The potential is remarkable.”

Floating solar panels are considered a viable source of renewable energy for reasons beyond the technology’s ability to occupy previously unused property (speaking about the surface of the body of the water here). You see, when the solar panels cover part of the water, the body as a whole has its temperature reduced. This, coupled with the fact that some of the water is not exposed to the open air, reduces water evaporation by 33% on natural lakes and ponds, and up to 50% on man-made facilities (numbers as per Ciel et Terre). 

The Hydrelio system that Bennett purchased is also a particularly durable floating solar farm, as it can withstand winds of up to 118 mph, and changes in water levels of up to 20 feet. 

To see the Sheeplands floating panel installation process, check out the video below:

Story via phys.org