Sharjah24 – Reuters: A Germany company will next month switch on a floating solar power plant it has built on a quarry lake, a rapidly-installed, renewable technology it says could help wean the country off Russian fossil fuels.
BayWa r.e. said on Monday the photovoltaic (PV) plant at the family-owned Quartzwerke in the western German town of Haltern am See will be able to provide 3 megawatts (MW) of power, equivalent to a typical onshore wind turbine.
The plant, with 5,800 modules on 360 floating elements, will go into service on May 24.
It comes as Germany scrambles to find alternative sources of energy and phase out its reliance on Russian oil and gas in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Toni Weigl, head of floating-PV product management at BayWa r.e., said Germany could house around 20 gigawatts (GW) of solar energy on water.
The floating panels will use space that would otherwise lie idle at Quartzwerke, a foundry sands maker in a densely populated region.
They will save 1,100 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year compared with the same amount of power produced from fossil fuels.
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