Solar offshore specialist Oceans of Energy has partnered with 15 European companies to scale up offshore solar technology in the North Sea.
Through an EU Joint Industry Project, the companies aim to scale up the construction of offshore solar farms to a standard format of 150MW capacity, which would enable the rollout of gigawatts of capacity in the sea.
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The project – called BAMBOO (Build scAlable Modular Bamboo-inspired Offshore sOlar systems) – aims to bring these building blocks as the new standard for offshore energy farms to be placed between offshore wind farms to optimise sea space, increase energy output, driving down cost and providing more continuous power throughout the year.
It will aim to mature the technology and attract funds to build the first offshore solar farm with a capacity between 100-200MW to be built at a yet unselected offshore wind farm from energy company Vattenfall before the end of the decade. By co-locating the offshore solar farm with a wind farm it would reduce the need for investments to expand the energy system as they would use the same grid connection.
The consortium is coordinated by Italy-based marine, energy certification and engineering firm RINA. It comprises Oceans of Energy along with four technology developers (Solarge, TKF, Pauwels Transformers, SolarCleano), five technical- and environmental consultancies (RINA, ABS, Aquatera Ltd, Aquatera Atlantico, and WavEC), three testing laboratories (MARIN, Fraunhofer CSP, SIRRIS), the marine policy think-tank European Marine Board and the offshore wind farm developer Vattenfall as a potential client for implementation.
The project BAMBOO aims to solve challenges towards the rollout of large-scale offshore solar, such as the robustness and performance of the solar panels in offshore conditions and the environmental impact of these solar farms. It also aims to contribute to the development of standardisation and testing methodologies for offshore solar technology, with MARIN conducting hydrodynamic assessments or Fraunhofer CSP testing the solar PV panels.
Despite offshore solar projects still being at a pilot phase, with only a few commercial applications in the pipeline, such as Oceans of Energy’s, many challenges for offshore solar to become commercially feasible still remain, as covered by PV Tech Premium last year. Moreover, Chinese solar manufacturer JinkoSolar recently told PV Tech it was working on adapting modules for the floating solar market.
North Sea, ‘land’ of offshore solar
In Europe, the Netherlands has been one of the countries which have most pushed forward the development of offshore solar in the continent, with a first tender last year seeking up to add solar capacity in the North Sea.
Oceans of Energy has long been working on offshore solar in the Dutch North Sea when it first deployed a solar farm in 2019 which withstood several storms a year later. This was followed by two more projects in the North Sea – one of which co-located with an offshore wind farm – and the world’s first commercial offshore solar-wind hybrid project last year, with a capacity of 0.5MW to be installed between the turbines of CrossWind’s 759MW Hollandse Kust Noord wind park.
“Oceans of Energy is proud to advance offshore solar further towards a real gamechanger in the renewable energy transition, by bringing these standardized, large scale offshore solar farms to the world” said Allard van Hoeken, founder and CEO of Oceans of Energy.
“Offshore solar is becoming a major contributor to the energy transition in the North Sea,” continued van Hoeken. “We are kickstarting the development of a standardized offshore solar building block, which fits right in-between four offshore wind turbines. This allows for optimized multi-source offshore energy farms without competing for scarce and limited land space”.