Giving Compass' Take:

• Maria Gallucci at Grist reports that floating solar panel projects are a growing trend worldwide.

• How can funders help to clarify the advantages and disadvantages of floating solar? 

• Read about solar power and affordable housing. 

Floating solar is a tiny but growing segment in the solar power industry. About 1,100 megawatts’ worth of projects are bobbing in waters worldwide, or less than 1 percent of total global solar installations. Most floating solar arrays are in eastern Asia, where countries have ambitious targets for solar energy but limited land to install panels. The world’s first floating solar array launched in Aichi, Japan, in 2007. The French company Ciel & Terre completed the world’s largest project, a 70-megawatt system, at an abandoned coal mining site in China’s Anhui province earlier this year.

Until recently, the U.S. floating solar market has been slower to develop, largely because the floating systems are still more expensive and less familiar than ground-mounted and rooftop solar projects. Analysts don’t yet have the long-term data to show how floating panels will operate over decades, or how the arrays could affect water quality and natural habitats where they’re installed.

“There are still a lot of uncertainties about how these systems perform in the long run…because it’s just such a new technology,” said Alexandra Aznar, a project leader at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL, in Golden, Colorado.

Still, as projects pop up globally, Aznar says she’s hearing more from state and local governments, utility companies, and federal agencies interested in putting panels on otherwise unused surfaces. All told, NREL estimates that there are 24,000 artificial lakes, ponds, and reservoirs that could host floating solar panels across the mainland United States. Combined, those projects hold the potential to produce enough solar power to equal almost 10 percent of the country’s annual electricity output.

Read the full article about floating solar panels by Maria Gallucci at Grist.