Development Review of Open Water Economical Floating Photovoltaic Platform

Abstract Building up safe, reliable, green photovoltaic (PV) power generation plant has become one key national development direction among China new energy industry. Nowadays, the available land for deploying PV is getting shorter, plus, national restrictions on deploying PV in lakes, reservoirs and other freshwater areas are also announced to ensure further environmental protection. Therefore, deploying floating PV platform on the seashore open water is emerging as national level urgent needs. A four body interconnected platforms (400kW) has been installed at 4km away from coastline of Yantai, China for concept proof and data collection purpose. One bamboo-based composite material floating platform is also installed nearby for material testing. Together with a bottom seating steel platform carrying various kind of testing equipment, the first Offshore PV Demonstration Base dedicated for PV testing under sea environment has been established by CIMC Raffles in China. This paper is a project development review for our semi-submersible type floating platforms. It states our novel weight optimization concepts in various aspects. Special highlight is a fully coupled time-domain hydro-structure-mooring multi-body analysis workflow, including composite material modelling, has been used to give an accurate global strength analysis. In addition, bamboo-based composite material platform, a totally lightweight and low-carbon platform is briefly introduced. Our illustrated experience covers design, fabrication, installation, and operation with field monitoring. This project review gives readers a project reference for assessment to any seashore floating PV platform. Our continuous research for developing a lightweight and low-carbon floating platform shall be one recommended option for future.