Solar
Pontoon
General information
What is Solar Energy ?
Solar Energy is radian light and heat from the sun, which is
transformed into Energy using a wide range of technologies.
The Earth receives 174 petawatts of incoming solar radiation
at the upper atmosphere. The total solar energy absorbed by
the earth’s atmosphere oceans and land masses is
approximately 3,850,000 EJ per year. This is more energy in
one hour than the world used in one year.
Solar Energy Development
Solar energy is a relatively old technology that was founded
in1897 by Frank Shuman. In 1912 Shuman built the first solar
thermal power station in Egypt. The discovery of cheap oil in
the 1930s discouraged the advancement of Solar energy.
Nowadays the energy market is still dominated by
non-renewables such as oil and coal. However the last years
a shift is occurring towards more renewable types of energy.
Today the high oil prices makes solar energy a good
alternative to full fill the growing the Energy demand. The
global energy potential due Solar is enough to full fill the
word energy consumption. In 2011, the International Energy
Agency said that "the development of affordable,
inexhaustible and clean solar energy technologies will have
huge longer-term benefits. It will increase countries’ energy
security through reliance on an indigenous, inexhaustible and
mostly import-independent resource, enhance sustainability,
reduce pollution, lower the costs of mitigating climate change,
and keep fuel prices lower than otherwise. These advantages
are global. Hence the additional costs of the incentives for early deployment should be considered learning investments; they must be wisely spent and need to be widely shared"
In 2013 the world photovoltaic capacity grew with 38% up to a total of 139GW, which is equal to 0.85% of the electricity demand on the planet.
Solar Energy offshore
In order to meet the increasing demand for sustainable energy, large solar parks have been built on land. The increasing occupation of land onshore has lead to increasing land prices. An alternative was to build solar parks offshore. Nowadays there are several offshore solar parks. The largest offshore solar park is to be found in Japan in Okegawa. The floating solar park has a surface of 12.400m2 and 4500 solar panels, this results in 1.25MW of energy each year.
Solar Panels in Okegawa, Japan Test project in India
The national hydro power Corporation is planning to built one of the largest floating solar park in the world. It will be the first floating solar power plant in India. The idea is to connect the different pontoon with each other. The park will produce an amount of 50MW of Solar Energy.
The company Vikram Solar is intending to complete a large part of the construction by December of this year. The plant will be built on a 130m2 platform and will be anchored to the lakebed. India is a leading country in large scale renewable energy projects. The government has promised to provide every household that doesn’t have electricity with solar electricity.
Japan will soon have the largest floating solar power plant in the world. Japan has adopted the innovative technology due to partly lack of space on land. The world’s largest floating solar power plant will have a total capacity of 1.7 MW and will be installed on the Lake Nishihira. The companies aim is to install floating solar plants with a total capacity of 60MW by the end of March 2015.
