Singapore, 13 January, 2022: In light of the increasing uptake of floating solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, wherein customers are looking to extend areas for production of solar energy to water bodies, it is pertinent to further examine the oft mentioned ‘cooling effect’ advantage of this kind of solar PV.
While conventional understanding would lead us to summarise that floating PV systems will be cooler than rooftop ones because of a certain ‘cooling effect’ provided by the water body, this is not the case. Water has little direct influence on panel cooling, as is explained in this research paper, co-authored by Dr. André Nobre, Vice President – Asset Management & Performance at Cleantech Solar. Dr. Nobre has been at the forefront of collaborative research on solar energy with scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS). We congratulate him on yet another important research paper on ‘Deciphering the thermal behavior of floating photovoltaic installations’, recently published in Solar Energy Advances, an open-source journal covering a broad range of themes relevant to solar energy research, development, applications and impact on sustainable development, climate change, resilience and circular economy.