A Dutch consortium is using CIGS solar modules developed by Swedish manufacturer Midsummer to test 20 kW pilot floating photovoltaic installations for offshore applications. These panels consist of 144 solar cells with a size of 4 m X 1 m and a capacity of up to 485 W.
A Dutch consortium led by the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) is deploying a 20-kilowatt pilot floating photovoltaic system at the Oostvoornse Meer Lake in Masfrakert, which is an artificial expansion of the Europoort industrial facility in the Port of Rotterdam.
The pilot plant will be tested before mid-2022, and its design can be used to build an offshore photovoltaic facility with an installed capacity of up to 5 megawatts in the North Sea and connect it to an existing offshore wind farm.
The floating system uses flexible, ultra-thin copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) solar panels provided by the turnkey equipment supplier Midsummer. The Swedish manufacturer provided Bold-144 (Magnum) products for the project. Each 485 W Magnum panel consists of 144 solar cells.
Installed on the float, the photovoltaic modules are partially connected in series and parallel. They were then connected to a string inverter on land, where TNO installed equipment to collect information about the array's performance, including radiation, temperature, and wind speed data.
"Offshore photovoltaics don't really exist yet," said TNO researcher Wim Soppe. "It is technically very difficult to install a large floating system with solar panels at sea and run it for decades."
He said that the design of the pilot system is feasible because it requires far fewer materials and lower costs than floating arrays built with crystalline silicon panels.
The standard version of the Bold model was originally intended to be used with roof felts and membranes as a foundation and used for flat roofs and sloping roofs. It is only 2 mm thin and weighs 3 kg/m². The battery is encapsulated by several layers of waterproof membrane.
TNO is also studying the effects of wind and waves on the performance of floating solar systems in a special test facility. Recently, scientists at the Copernicus Institute at Utrecht University claimed that after comparing the North Sea project with traditional systems at the Utrecht outdoor photovoltaic test site, offshore photovoltaic power plants may be more productive than ground-mounted arrays.
According to a recent report by DNV GL, by 2030, the North Sea can hold approximately 100 megawatts of floating solar capacity, and by 2035 it can hold 500 megawatts. The average electricity cost of offshore photovoltaic systems is currently estimated to be about 354 euros/MWh, but in the future it should be close to ground-based solar parks.
The research alliance includes Bluewater Energy Services, Genap and the Dutch Maritime Research Institute (Marin).
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