Environmental and technical impacts of floating photovoltaic plants (FPVs) as an emerging clean energy technology
Name:
Publisher version
View Source
Access full-text PDFOpen Access
View Source
Check access options
Check access options
Authors
M Pouran, Hamid
Padilha Campos Lopes, Mariana
Nogueira, Tainan
Castelo Branco, David
Sheng, Yong

Issue Date
2022-10-03
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Floating photovoltaic plants (FPVs) are emerging as a new modality of photovoltaic system application. FPVs present several benefits in comparison with ground-mounted systems and could have major and lasting positive environmental and technical impacts globally, which is the focus of this paper. Floating solar technology does not occupy habitable and productive areas and can be deployed in brownfields and degraded environments, that helps reducing land-use conflicts. Saving water through mitigating evaporation and improving water security in water-scarce regions combined with their flexibility for deployment on different water bodies including drinking water reservoirs are of other advantages of FPVs. They also have higher efficiency than ground-mounted PV solar and are compatible with the existing hydropower infrastructures, which supports diversifying the energy supply and its resilience. Despite the notable growth of floating photovoltaics on an international scale, lack of supporting policies and development roadmaps by the governments could hinder FPVs’ sustainable growth. Long-term reliability of the floating structures is also of the existing concerns that if not answered could limit the expansion of this emerging technology.Citation
Pouran, H., Padilha Campos Lopes, M., Nogueira, T., Castelo Branco, D. and Sheng, Y. (2022) Environmental and technical impacts of floating photovoltaic plants (FPVs) as an emerging clean energy technology. iScience, 25 (11), Article Number 105253. DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105253Publisher
Cell PressJournal
iScienceAdditional Links
https://www.cell.com/iscience/homeType
Journal articleLanguage
enDescription
© 2022 The Authors. Published by Cell Press. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.105253ISSN
2589-0042ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1016/j.isci.2022.105253
Scopus Count
Collections
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/