Trump Inherits A Floating Solar Bonanza

janeiro 15, 2025

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Not that he’ll take advantage of it, but new evidence has emerged that the President-elect could tap into enough new gigawatts of solar energy to provide clean kilowatts for 100 million typical US homes each year. To gild the green lily, not one solar panel will replace farmland — or any other land, for that matter — because new floating solar technology is in play. Oh, well. In another four years a new president will take office … maybe then….

Floating Solar Panels: Look Ma, No Land Use Controversy

Floating solar offers the juicy prize of collecting more solar energy without stepping into messy fights over rural solar development. Floating solar panels float on land that has already been developed for water infrastructure, including human-made reservoirs and ponds as well as facilities at wastewater treatment plants and other industrial sites. The solar panels also lie on the surface of water, so they won’t spoil the view of nearby cornfields, graneries, logistics hubs, factory-style livestock operations, and other bucolic features of the modern agricultural landscape.

CleanTechnica took note of the potential for floating solar in the US back in 2018, when the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory took stock of inland human-made opportunities (offshore is another kettle of fish). Weeding out unsuitable sites, the research team came up with an estimate of more than 24,000 human-made ponds, reservoirs, and other water bodies which could collectively account for about 10% of annual US electricity generation.

Floating Solar Is Coming For Your Fossil Fuels

There being no such thing as a free lunch, floating solar is not quite as simple as it sounds. Aside from the engineering challenges, many reservoirs are already pulling double duty for public recreation and habitat conservation. Additional complications include stormy conditions, icing, and variations in water levels.

Still, the floating solar trend has already caught on internationally, with solar advocates eyeing hundreds of new hydropower dams in the pipeline around the world.

Here in the US, activity is also picking up, but slowly. Researchers at NREL aim to spark some more momentum by calculating solar potential down to the level of specific reservoirs, making it easier for developers to spot potential opportunities.

For example, the team weeded out reservoirs where the wake from passing vessels could damage a floating solar array. Also not making the cut were reservoirs where ice and snow load present issues. Shallow reservoirs were also eliminated, along with “dry” reservoirs used for flood control, reservoirs with heavy water flows at inlets and outlets, and reservoirs where subsurface conditions make it impractical to moor floating infrastructure.

To come up with a final list of potentially suitable sites, the researchers deployed a precision methodology commonly used for planning wind farms and ground-mounted solar arrays. Interested? Information on each reservoir along with a calculator tool for estimating both hard and soft costs is available free of charge at the the website AquaPV, which is administered by Idaho National Laboratory.

“The AquaPV toolset provides foundational data and analysis for policymakers, developers, utilities, and financial firms seeking to understand floating PV (FPV) project viability on United States reservoirs, assisting in scaling the systematic evaluation and implementation of this concept,” the lab explains.

More Floating Solar On Federally Controlled Water, Eventually

If you caught that thing about “United States reservoirs,” that conveys an important detail about the new NREL report. Unlike the 2018 study, the new report provides information only on reservoirs that are under federal control. “This study focused on federally owned and regulated reservoirs in the United States that fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and/or are licensed hydropower projects by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC),” the researchers explain.

Still, within that limited dataset, the potential is significant. After weeding out unsuitable sites, the researchers identified more than 1,000 reservoirs with floating solar potential.

Technically, the NREL team found that this group of reservoirs could host at least 861 gigawatts (DC) in solar energy capacity, on up to 1,042 gigawatts. For the sake of comparison, take a look at the leading solar state of California, where more than 20 years worth of solar activity has added up to just 49 gigawatts.

To put another perspective on the technical potential of floating solar on US-controlled reservoirs, NREL cites the figure of 1,476 terawatt-hours in annual electricity generation, equivalent to about 100 million average homes.

To be clear, the technical calculation is based on the assumption that each reservoir could be packed with floating solar panels from end to end. The reality is that just a fraction of the surface would actually be available for solar development. However, even if just 30 gigawatts could be squeezed out of the total, that would match the ambitious goal for offshore wind set by outgoing President Joe Biden back in 2021.

Dream on, Klingon. Though anything is possible, the likelihood is that renewable energy developers and advocates will have to pocket the whole floating solar idea for another four years.

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Image: Floating solar panels on hydropower dams and other reservoirs controlled by the US government could power tens of millions of homes, eventually (courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory).