Ciel & Terre pioneered the first specific and industrialized floating PV solar system – named Hydrelio. The innovative floating solar platform is a cost-effective, safe, and durable (resistant to winds and waves) way to make solar panels float on large bodies of water – such as reservoirs, quarry lakes, irrigation canals or remediation and tailing ponds. The company has installed Hydrelio systems all across the world in France, South Korea, China, Brazil, Taiwan, the United States, United Kingdom, and now Germany.
In a recent announcement, Ciel & Terre proudly shared news of the launching of a new utility-scale 750 kWp floating solar array in Renchen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany in July. It’s expected to produce 736 MWh per year with its 2,300 plus solar panels. Not only was it the company’s first project in Germany, but it was also Germany’s first utility-scale floating solar PV power facility.
Construction began in February and ended in June, whereupon it was connected to the grid. It took 3-4 weeks to assemble the floats. The facility will provide clean, renewable electricity to the granite mining company Ossola GmbH (who owns the lake where it was installed). The electricity will be used to power their quarry machines, with any excess electricity produced being re-injected into the local grid.
Ossola GmbH selected Erdgas Südwest, an EnBW subsidiary (one of the biggest German energy company), to develop and construct the project – who chose to collaborate with Ciel & Terre. The design, floating structure and installation were all provided by Ciel & Terre, including the unique method of anchorage. This project was actually the company’s inauguration of an unprecedented anchoring system for an FPV plant.
The installation of the floating PV plant was ambitious because of the site type – it is a 40-hectare quarry lake with gaps dug underwater with variable depths (up to 59m) and another hole planned to be made shortly. These physical and operational constraints required for a usual anchoring solution. What did Ciel & Terre do? It issued an unprecedented anchoring solution: to install a parabolic mooring line system.
Neige Breant, Sales manager EMEA and Vincent Pinchou, Project Engineering Manager EMEA, explained to CleanTechnica in an interview:
One big anchoring cable is placed at the West side of the array and crosses the lake from South to North. Then small cables are linking this big cable to the floating array. As the quarry is still in operation in the middle of the lake, it was not allowed to stretch cables from the West side of the island up to the West bank of the reservoir.
So, the parabolic line has been studied as the anchoring solution the most cost effective. Indeed, the depth of the reservoir on the West side is around 60 m. With such a depth the use of divers to install the anchors is too expensive.
In other words, what they did was attach the facility to the banks on three sides and its fourth edge is tied to a cable crossing the pond, thus bonding opposite lake shores.
Ever since Ciel & Terre came up with this new idea, it has used the solution in consulting other projects. The world-premiere floating solar array with a parabolic mooring line could be the answer for projects where anchoring is an issue, thus making it possible to install even more floating solar plants all over the planet!
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