Haohui Liu, Abhishek Kumar and Thomas Reindl
Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore, Singapore
Abstract – Floating solar, which is the installation of photovoltaic (PV) systems on water bodies, is a nascent, yet fast-growing PV deployment option, with a terawatt-scale market potential globally. Singapore has contributed significantly to the research in floating solar application on inland fresh water reservoirs by building the world’s largest floating solar testbed. in this paper, we give an overview of floating solar technologies, and highlight some learnings and research findings from the testbed. We quantified the cooling effect on water and its benefits on energy yield of the PV systems. We also discuss some issues and pitfalls to avoid. Going forward, offshore floating solar is the next frontier with significant opportunities.
Keywords – floating solar, photovoltaic, reservoirs, near-shore, electricity, energy.
Thomas Reindl is Deputy CEO of the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) and Principal Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He started with photovoltaics (PV) in 1992 at the SIEMENS Corporate R&D Labs. After holding several management positions at SIEMENS and running one of the leading German PV systems integration companies as Chief Operating Officer, he joined SERIS in 2010 and soon became Director of the Solar Energy System cluster. During his time at SERIS, he won public research grants in excess of SGD 20 million, founded 2 spin-off companies and authored strategic scientific papers such as the “PV Roadmap for Singapore”. Dr. Reindl holds a Master in Chemistry, a Ph.D. in Natural Sciences and an MBA from INSEAD, all awarded with highest honors. His research interest are high-performance PV and embedded systems, techno-economic road-mapping and the reliable integration of renewable energies into power systems.