No Title 2687

Supplement to Future of Electricity—A Solar Power System that Floats

India’s Tata Power has formed a partnership with Australia’s Sunengy to demonstrate a new solar power idea.

Instead of row after row of complicated photovoltaic solar panels stretching across acres of land, Sunengy’s new system is designed for use on top of water. The system will use clear plastic panels to concentrate the sun’s rays on the center of each device as it floats on a lake upstream at an existing hydroelectric dam.

This new idea offers several advantages. The individual concentrating solar power units, which track the sun across the sky in the same way that living sunflowers do, are much less expensive to produce than photovoltaic solar panels. Water underneath the floating solar devices helps keep them at the best operating temperatures, unlike land-based solar systems that can overheat.

The new system can also extend the usefulness of seasonal water volumes. During sunny hours, the solar units produce most of the electricity, then during the night water passing through the dam’s turbines takes over to produce electricity. With floating solar panels generating some of the electricity at the site during the days, the volume of water can be managed better to produce electricity for longer periods of weeks or months.

To read the Kentucky Living August 2011 Future of Electricity column that goes along with this supplement, go to India’s Power Struggles.

To watch a video that shows floating solar panels in action, go to sunfloat video.