Mixing electricity and water is often not a good idea, but floating solar panels on water is one of the most rapidly expanding sectors in the solar-power market. Worldwide, floating solar projects have grown more than 100-fold in less than four years, to 1,100 MW by September 2018 from 10 MW at the end of 2014, according to an October report by the World Bank and the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore.
The growth of floating solar in the United States has been slower, but that is starting to change. Ciel & Terre says it will install about 5 MW of floating solar projects in the U.S. this year. Next year, “we could have more than 25 MW of floating solar projects,” says Chris Bartle, U.S. development manager for the French company, which also manufactures pontoons used to float solar panels. The company has focused solely on floating solar projects since 2011.