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Hybrid hydro/PV offers

untapped potential

P BUILDING floating solar plants on the reser- waterbody constraints and generation system
voirs of existing large-scale hydropower plants performance.”
(HPPs) could provide a theoretical 7.6 TW The article, “Hybrid floating solar photovol-
of generating capacity, the US Department of taics-hydropower systems: Benefits and global
Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory assessment of technical potential,” was co-au-
(NREL) said this week. thored by NREL colleagues Ursula Grunwald,
The concept is currently used to a very lim- Evan Rosenlieb, Heather Mirletz, Alexandra
ited extent worldwide, with only one successful Aznar, Robert Spencer and Sadie Cox.
small hybrid floating solar/hydropower project Floating photovoltaics (PV) remain a nas-
currently installed in Portugal. cent technology in the US. Previous NREL work
However, floating solar panels are far more estimated that installing floating solar panels on
developed, with South Korea and Japan already man-made US reservoirs could generate about
using the technology. 10% of the nation’s annual electricity production.
The researchers estimate that adding floating NREL estimates 379,068 freshwater hydro-
solar panels to bodies of water that are already power reservoirs across the planet could host
home to hydropower stations could produce as combined floating PV sites with existing hydro-
much as 10,600 TWh per year of power from the power facilities.
solar PV systems alone. This does not include the Additional siting data is needed prior to any
amount generated from hydropower. implementation, because some reservoirs may
By comparison, global electricity consump- be dry during parts of the year or may not be
tion stood at 22,300 TWh in 2018, the most otherwise conducive to hosting floating PV.
recent year for which statistics are available, Joining floating PV to existing hydro infra-
according to the International Energy Agency structure would reduce transmission costs by
(IEA). linking to a common substation.
“This is really optimistic,” said Nathan Lee, Additionally, the two technologies can
a researcher with NREL’s Integrated Decision balance each other. The greatest potential for
Support group and lead author of a new paper solar power is during the dry seasons, while
published in the journal Renewable Energy. for hydropower rainy seasons present the best
“This does not represent what could be eco- opportunity.
nomically feasible or what the markets could Under one scenario, that means operators of a
actually support. Rather, it is an upper-bound hybrid system could use pumped storage hydro-
estimate of feasible resources that considers power to store excess solar generation.™

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 39 01•October•2020