Specialist floating solar (FPV) developer Third Pillar Solar will examine the potential of developing 500MW of assets on Texas reservoirs.
The company entered into an agreement with Diamond Infrastructure Solutions, an infrastructure management and investment firm based on the US Gulf Coast, to investigate the “design, development and deployment” of floating solar projects on Diamond-owned reservoirs.
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The agreement could result in up to US$700 million in investment, the companies said, and is expected to result in 500MW of utility-scale FPV capacity. They said this deal is a first of its kind for the US market.
Jaimeet Gulati, CEO of Third Pillar, said the scale of the deal “highlights how floating solar can enhance and transform the value of existing infrastructure, all while providing cost-competitive energy, preserving agricultural land, reducing evaporation losses and existing out of public view.”
Third Pillar claims that the developments have the potential to conserve approximately 15% of the reservoirs’ water that is currently lost to evaporation.
Floating solar technology is gaining traction in the industry, as it has the potential to limit the need for available land, reduce water loss from evaporation and broaden the available areas for renewable energy deployment. There is evidence that solar modules can also be more efficient over water, as the cooler environment improves their performance.
D3Energy, another FPV developer, began construction on a 6MW project in Ohio earlier this month. Outside the US, a lot of floating solar projects have advanced in Southeast Asia. The first megawatt-scale FPV project in the Philippines began operations earlier this month, and Malaysian utility Tenaga Nasional Berhad launched a FPV pilot in July, which it said could result in up to 2.2GW of new solar generation capacity.
Diamond Infrastructure Solutions is a partnership between chemical manufacturing firm Dow and Macquarie Asset Management, established in 2023. It owns infrastructure and chemical manufacturing assets in Louisiana and Texas. This includes pipeline assets across the Gulf Coast region.
