Research Status and Development Trend of Floating Photovoltaic Structure System

Abstract

Under the guidance of the dual carbon goals, the development and utilization scale of new energy in China, including photovoltaics and wind power, has steadily increased. Particularly, the floating photovoltaic technology in inland waters has been developing quickly over the past decade because it could compensate for certain shortcomings of traditional terrestrial photovoltaics. The offshore floating photovoltaic (FPV) pilot projects are also continuously emerging due to the advantages of longer daylight hours, higher radiation levels, and enhanced efficiency of light utilization in marine environments compared to terrestrial settings under identical solar irradiance conditions. To comprehensively understand the development prospects of offshore FPV systems, the development progress of FPV systems was traced, and an analysis was conducted on the forms of various types of floating structures, their technical characteristics, and their applicability in the marine environment. Summarization was carried out on the floating photovoltaic mooring system in terms of the classification of the mooring, the chain deployment mode, the form of the mooring foundation, etc., and a few new types of mooring systems were put forward. Finally, the development trend of the offshore FPV system was predicted.

Keywords

Floating photovoltaic / Floating structure system / Offshore FPV / Mooring system / Wind-solar complementarity

Acknowledgments

This research is funded by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2022YFB4200700). The support is gratefully acknowledged. The results and conclusions presented are of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the sponsors.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, X.Y. and J.L.; Methodology, Y.Y. and X.G.; Investigation, X.Y. and C.D.; Writing—Original Draft Preparation, C.D.; Writing—Review & Editing, X.Y. and C.D.; Supervision, J.L. and H.L.

Ethics Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article; further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Funding

This research was funded by National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2022YFB4200700) and Tianjin Science and Technology Plan Project (Grant No. 23ZYQYGX00140).

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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