The giant floating solar farm on the outskirts of London has completed one year of operation

The structure is Europe’s largest, covering an area equivalent to eight football pitches

The structure is Europe’s largest, covering an area equivalent to eight football pitches

Europe’s largest floating solar farm has been operating since March 2016. Being installed on Thames Water’s Queen Elizabeth II reservoir near Walton-On-Thames, it is invisible to all but Heathrow passengers and a few flats in neighboring estates. However, its 23,000 solar panels produce enough electricity to power the utility’s local water treatment plants, which provide clean drinking water to around 10 million people in greater London and the south-east of England. The panels are mounted on a pontoon consisting of 61,000 floats and 177 anchors, and cover an area of 57,500 m² in total (around a tenth of the surface of the reservoir). They have a capacity of 6.3MW and were initially constructed in sections before being towed out into the reservoir.

The pros of floating solar arrays

“One of the major benefits to floating solar is that there is all this space in areas of London or other cities, where you have a large area on top of the reservoir that’s not being used,” says Liv Harder from Lightsource Renewable Energy, the company that installed the floating panels. The good news is that the cost of solar panels has gone down nine times in the last five years, and the floats themselves also continue to go down in price, making such projects more affordable. Apart from that, installing solar arrays on water does not require planning permission, unlike similar projects on land.

Photo source: Lightsource

Photo source: Lightsource

Source: The Guardian