A floating solar plant using vertical panels is flipping the usual solar curve
https://www.vozpopuli.com/indux/en/a-floating-solar-plant-using-vertical-panels-is-flipping-the-usual-solar-curve-by-producing-more-power-in-the-morning-and-late-afternoon-the-hours-when-homes-and-factories-actually-spike-demand/5308/
A floating solar plant using vertical panels is flipping the usual solar curve by producing more power in the morning and late afternoon, the hours when homes and factories actually spike demand
In Bavaria, SINN Power is testing a surprisingly simple answer. Stand the panels upright, float them on water, and let them catch the lower sun at the edges of the day. The company inaugurated what it calls the world’s first vertically floating photovoltaic plant at the Jais gravel pit in Germany’s Starnberg district, a 1.87-megawatt system with 2,600 solar modules.
Why vertical changes the clock
Most conventional solar panels in the Northern Hemisphere are tilted toward the south. That setup maximizes midday sunlight, but by the EU’s own science advisers, it can also create a midday power surge that is less useful when demand rises earlier or later.
SKipp flips that pattern. The modules face east and west, so one side works harder in the morning and the other in the late afternoon, while the bifacial design can use light from both sides.
Details
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/8/4317
You can download a PDF there.
Questions and comments:
It appears that the cells are indeed "bifacial" ... one on each side, like having an east and west set of panels.
Wind is allowed to flex things. Apparently, water helps in this respect, compared to a ground mount.
Also, it looks like the water surface is not used as a reflector, to bounce some light into the panels.
Need to read the report.
OOOPS 17.5 MB
Shoulld be no problem except for phone users' data and memory.
= new reply since forum marked as read
If one monitors grids - most of them anyway - and I monitor a number of them, power demand peaks in the early evening, after the sun goes down.
I've been downloading them for years, and they appear in some of my posts here, generally from CAISO, the California grid, the solar nirvana that continues to rely on methane mines for reliable power:
Here are few I happen to have handy from earlier posts:
One can access these graphics at will from the CAISO website, where one can also see when solar output in solar nirvana peaks, and the offset with California demand peaks.
The CAISO site is here:
Outlook CAISO
I oppose the profligate development/destruction of land and sea and freshwater wilderness to construct energy generation industrial parks, which is why I oppose the popular but unsustainable solar industry.
Floating solar junk is probably worst of all, since the failure of the solar and wind affectation to address the collapse of the planetary atmosphere has destabilized the weather, and extreme weather cuts through solar industrial parks readily.
Here's are some examples of destruction of solar industrial parks by extreme weather from one of my earlier posts:
From Inside Climate News:
Virgin Group Company BMR Energy Announces Plans to Rebuild St. Thomas Solar Farm
Renew Economy:
Solar groups deny damage, pollution claims after Danas
(There's reference to denial again.)
Why the solar revolution is in grave danger—and how it can be saved
Now we want to do the same for our bodies of water, far less stable than land based cases?
The solar industry is not "green;" it is not sustainable; and it represents no alternative to the use of dangerous fossil fuels, since it depends on the availability of fossil fuels to address its intrinsic (and frankly dangerous, given existing heat extremes) unreliability.
Please note: Material below is drawn from a Creative Commons source:
IEA (2025), Renewables 2025, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2025, Licence: CC BY 4.0
Below, reference is made to a “Low-RES scenario”:
(Begining on Page 80)
From non-hydro renewable power generation capacity added between 2010 and 2023, approximately 3 200 TWh of electricity was generated in fuel-importing countries in 2023. Replacing this output with fossil fuels would require significantly higher energy inputs due to their lower conversion efficiencies. For example, typical coal and open-cycle gas turbine power plants operate at 30-40% efficiency, while combined-cycle gas turbines reach 50-60%. This means that each GWh of renewable electricity produced avoided the need for 2-3 GWh of fossil fuel inputs. For instance, 1 GW of solar PV capacity in Europe generates roughly 1 000 GWh annually, equivalent to burning around 3 000 GWh of coal, or approximately 400 000 tonnes.
As a result, global imports of coal and gas in 2023 would have been around 45% higher – equivalent to over 8 000 TWh of additional fuel inputs – without non-hydro renewable energy developments since 2010. This means roughly 700 million tonnes of coal and 400 billion cubic metres of natural gas, together representing about 10% of total global consumption of these fuels in 2023.
The Low-RES scenario results in a substantial increase in reliance on imported fuels for electricity generation, significantly raising energy security risks in many countries. This impact is especially pronounced in countries with limited domestic energy resources, where renewables have played a key role in avoiding high import dependence. In the absence of renewable energy deployment, countries such as Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Türkiye, Chile, Thailand and Japan would have greater fossil fuel-based generation, increasing their vulnerability to supply disruptions.
In the European Union, limited domestic fossil fuel resources have long been the main driver behind renewable energy incentives. In 2023, about one-quarter of the EU electricity supply was met by imported fossil fuels. Without wind, solar PV and bioenergy deployment over the previous decade, this share would have reached nearly 50%. The impact is most striking for Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and Greece, where the difference could have been as much as 30-50 percentage points. In the Low-RES scenario, the energy security challenges during the 2022 energy crisis would have been significantly more severe.
The United Kingdom expanded its non-hydro renewable electricity generation nearly sixfold between 2010 and 2023. As a result, the share of its electricity supply met by imported fossil fuels decreased from around 45% in 2013 to less than 25% in 2023, despite declining domestic coal and gas output. In the Low-RES scenario, import dependence would have approached 60% by 2023.
In China, despite massive domestic coal production, imports made up about 10% of the country’s total coal supply in 2023 – and nearly 40% of its natural gas. Without deployment of renewables over the past decade, China’ s fossil fuelbased electricity generation would have been more than 25% higher. This would have potentially required a doubling of fossil fuel imports, raising China’s electricity supply import dependence from 7% to nearly 25%.
Brazil, with one of the lowest fossil fuel import dependencies among large economies – around 5% in 2023 – would also have experienced significant impacts. Without wind and solar energy deployment, fossil-based generation would have needed to rise by around 170 TWh, primarily from imported natural gas. Imports of natural gas would have increased nearly five-fold, pushing electricity import dependence to almost 30%, despite the country’s large hydropower base.
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