Niche Inventions: Floating Solar Panels

Solar Novus:

Floating solar panels soaking up the sun on Italy’s Lake Colignola will provide a cost-effective, more visually attractive way to harness the sun’s power, says its inventor, Marco Rosa-Clot.

Rosa-Clot says while PV panels on buildings or fields use valuable farmland, lose energy through overheating and look ugly, his flower-petal-shaped panels come without these potential problems. The flat, rotating panels are winged by reflectors and sit on raft-like structures, anchored to the lakebed with a pylon.

The Floating Tracking Cooling Concentrator (FTCC) system takes advantage of unused areas of artificial reservoirs or disused quarries and the water keeps the panels cool. Reflectors maximize solar capture.

Photo by Abi Skipp

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