Floating solar

Typically, these bodies of water are reservoirs, quarry lakes, irrigation canals or remediation and tailing ponds.

[13][14][15] According to a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), this increase is primarily due to the need for anchoring systems to secure the panels on water.

[16] American, Danish, French, Italian and Japanese nationals were the first to register patents for floating solar.

[18] The first floating solar installation was in Aichi, Japan, in 2007, built by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

In 2016, Kyocera developed what was then the world's largest, a 13.4 MW farm on the reservoir above Yamakura Dam in Chiba Prefecture[21] using 50,000 solar panels.

[27] Floating solar can have positive and negative effects on the ocean environment: for instance, it can act as an artificial reef and protect small fish and other animals.

[28] The construction process for a floating solar project includes installing anchors and mooring lines that attach to the waterbed or shore, assembling floats and panels into rows and sections onshore, and then pulling the sections by boat to the mooring lines and secured into place.