China to test wave-resistant floating photovoltaic platform

The main structure of China’s first wave-resistant floating photovoltaic platform, “Yellow Sea No. 1”, has been completed and laded for shipment for sea trial, according to China Huaneng Group.

The platform weighing more than 360 tons was completely moved onto a transport ship on Tuesday. Then it will be shipped to a wind farm 30 kilometers offshore, where the depth of water reaches more than 30 meters.

“It is the deepest floating offshore photovoltaic platform built in China. Designed in accordance with the extreme sea conditions in a 50-year period in this sea area, the platform owns the largest wave resistance capability in China, and can withstand waves up to 10 meters high,” said Nan Mingjun, project manager of “Yellow Sea No. 1” floating offshore photovoltaic platform.

With a side length of over 25 meters, the total area of the platform is ??approximately 1,624 square meters.

In addition, the platform is nine meters high in total, with up to 7.5 meters designed to work above sea level, ensuring that waves cannot flood the solar panels even in some extreme sea conditions.

With 64 plastic blocks providing buoyancy, the platform has innovatively adopted the hexagonal design and truss structure, which can effectively reduce the weight by about 25 percent compared to traditional ones.

“This is an experimental platform using a total of 434 photovoltaic panels. And there are three different technical routes and four different capacities, in order to find a better solution for the large-scale development of far-reaching offshore photovoltaics in the future,” said Liu Xin, chief engineer of the platform.

The platform will carry out one-year field monitoring and experiments at sea to provide data support for the efficient and safe application of floating photovoltaic technology in the marine environment.

It will also explore the integrated development with marine ranching, in a bid to shore up the three-dimensional, intensive development of the ocean and ecological protection.