FPV for Sustainable Electricity Generation in a Large European City

Abstract

There is a huge interest worldwide related to continuously increasing the use of renewable energy sources (RES) for electricity generation. Romania, at this moment, even though it has to attain a share of 30.7% of RES from total energy consumption by 2030, does not have any major investment project of this kind in the near future. Photovoltaic (PV) is one of the most promising technologies, with decreasing prices for PV panels but with the disadvantage of large, needed surfaces. This study presents a solution to install PV panels where there is a need for electricity, in a large city, by using the surface of a reservoir. “Lacul Morii” Reservoir in Bucharest is the choice for the case study. The insolation and the possibility to install floating PV, as well as electricity generation, benefits for water quality and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction are assessed, and even the installation of charging stations for electric bikes and cars. The results are very promising, and the main conclusion is that, after its realization, the floating photovoltaic (FPV) plant on “Lacul Morii” Reservoir will be a source of clean electricity and a demonstration project on how to benefit from solar energy to produce electricity in large cities where there are reservoirs.

Energy Transition in Marginalized Urban Areas: The Case of Romania

“…The indicative trajectory was set at 21.83% for 2017-2018, while the total shares of renewable energy consumption in gross final energy consumption were 24.45% (2017) and 23.87% (2018) [10]. In the last ten years, Romania has installed more than 1300 MW in groundmounted PhotoVoltaic (PV) plants [11]. This experience in the field of PV systems can be complemented by real-scale laboratories, e.g., those existing in Romanian technical universities, related to different PV cells and panel technologies [12] possibly integrated with other renewable energy sources (RES) [13] and even analysis of operation under harsh conditions [14].…”

Recent Progress in Floating Solar Photovoltaic Systems: A Review from Malaysia’s Perspective

“…The utilised area is 8000 𝑚 2 , accounting for 0.32% of the total reservoir area, the installed system has a capacity of 1 𝑀𝑊𝑃, and the annual produced power and CO2 emissions saved are 1,114 𝑀𝑊ℎ and 341 tCO2, respectively. The benefits of this project are increased power generation and awareness of implementing the first FPV system in Romania [17].…”

Enabling Floating Solar Photovoltaic (FPV) Deployment: FPV Technical Potential Assessment for Southeast Asia

“…Previous technical potential assessments for FPV have been conducted at a global scale (Lee et al 2020;Jin et al 2023), focused on specific countries or regions such as the United States (Spencer et al 2019), Spain (Lopez et al 2022), Brazil (Campos Lopes et al 2022, the European Union (Kakoulaki et al 2023) and Africa (Gonzalez Sanchez et al 2021), or focused on specific sites (Agrawal et al 2022;Popa et al 2021). These technical potential assessments primarily focus on artificial waterbodies -mainly hydropower reservoirs, with some focus on non-hydropower reservoirs (e.g., other artificial waterbodies such as drinking water reservoirs or water treatment ponds).…”