CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION
1.1HISTORY
American, Danish, French, Italian and Japanese nationals were the first to
register patents for floating solar. In Italy the first registered patent, regarding PV
modules on water, goes back to February 2008.The MIRARCO (Mining Innovation
Rehabilitation and Applied Research Corporation Ontario, CANADA) research group
quotes several solutions that were put forward in the years 2008-2011 and 2012-
2014.[1] Without being exhaustive the installations can be classified into three categories:
 PV plants constituted by modules mounted on pontoons
 PV modules mounted on rafts built in plastic and galvanized steel
 PV modules mounted on rafts, fully in plastic.

It is Impossible to give a detailed analysis of the many small PV floating plants

built in the first 10 years. The plot here below is based on data taken from the web for
FPV with more than 500 kW of power. In the Asian Clean Energy Summit in Singapore
(Oct. 2017) two numbers where quoted by the World- Bank Group: 453 MWp for
installation in 2017 and a forecast of 750 MWp for 2018.

The following graph shows the growth of solar floating installations globally from
the beginning.

Figure 1: Installed capacity worldwide in MW

 Data taken from “Where Sun Meets Water: Floating Solar Market Report,” World
Bank Group and SERIS, Singapore, 2018.

1.2 LITERATURE SURVEY

One of the largest challenges before India today is the power crisis. More than
300 million Indians have no access to electricity. India’s power sector could supply just
124,000 megawatts for a country of more than 1.2 billion people. Even the supply is not
regular for those who are accessing electricity. Shutdowns and load-shedding interrupts
irrigation and manufacturing across the country. To meet the demand of India our focus
should be on alternate energy sources. Renewable energy sources like hydro and wind are
area specific whereas solar energy can be installed in any place. With India being the
seventh largest country in terms of area and gifted with fairly well sunshine nearly 300
days in a year, solar power has lots of potential in store for us. The global solar industry
has been seeing exponential growth in recent years, and that’s expected to continue. After
hitting about 178 GW of solar PV power capacity by the end of 2014, global solar PV
capacity is expected to hit 200 GW in the end of 2016. Solar power plays a dominant role
in the world-wide effort to reduce greenhouse gases; it is considered a clean energy and
an efficient source of electricity. Yet several obstacles have been undermining the
expansion of this sector and many of its actors are looking for new approaches that would
make solar power more practical and commercially attractive. Water utilities often have
suitable water sources such as storage reservoirs for drinking water, irrigation water and
open channel aqueducts where floating solar panels could be installed.

1.3 OBJECTIVES
The main objective was to explore unutilized water bodies and not consume the
everdecreasing land. The requirement was of a solar power generating system that would
be suitable for any water body, with the flexibility of being expanded in any other given
environment.
 CHAPTER 2
FLOATING SOLAR POWER PLANT
2.1 INTRODUCTION
Recently, the market for solar-energy is expanding due to introduction of the RPS
(Renewable Portfolio Standard). Thus, vigorous research is held on alternatives against
the lack of sites to install overland PV systems. The floating PV system demonstrated in
this paper is a new method of solar-energy generation utilizing water surface available on
dams, reservoirs, and other bodies of water. This method has an advantage that allows
efficient use of the nation’s soil without bringing damages to the environment, which the
pre-existing PV systems cause when it is installed in farmlands or forests. Until 2012,
Korea applied REC(Renewable Energy Certificate) value of 1.0 to floating PV systems
similar to general PV systems. However, recognizing the technological value and
necessity of floating PV systems, Korea has announced that the REC value will be 1.5 for
floating PV systems, the same value as BIPV(Building Integrated Photovoltaic System),
from year 2013. This paper will briefly introduce the 100kW and 500kW floating PV
systems which K-water developed and installed, and analyze its utility compared with
overland PV systems on the basis of its generation performance since its installation.
Also, effect of wind speed, and waves on floating PV system structure was measured to
analyze the effect of the environment on floating PV system generation efficiency.
2.2 FLOATING SOLAR PANELS
The idea of ‘floating solar panels’ is to build the photovoltaic system over water
bodies instead of conventional places such as rooftops or open lands. This relatively new
concept has been trialled and implemented in regions blessed with abundance of sunlight
such as Australia, India and Israel. After the Fukushima disaster, Japan’s search for new,
independent, renewable energy sources had also led them to commission the construction
of the world’s largest solar power plant, in terms of output, in 2014. This sections aims to
investigate the numerous benefits of floating solar panels that were highly publicized.
 Figure 2: Floating Solar farm
2.3 MAXIMISING USAGE OF VALUABLE LAND
Environmentalists have always campaigned solar energy as a clean and
sustainable source of energy. However, construction of solar power plants requires large
plots of open lands. This makes the notion of harvesting solar energy infeasible in
countries like Japan and Singapore, where real estate is extremely expensive due to both
scarcity of land and high population density. By building solar panels over water bodies,
valuable land can be used for other purposes.

Figure 3: Maximising usage of valuable land

2.4 INCREASING OUTPUT AND REDUCING MAINTENANCE OF
SOLAR PANELS
One of the main complications encountered in the usage of solar panels is
overheating due to excessive solar radiation and high ambient temperatures. Figure 2.1
illustrates the relationship between the electrical power output, P, and the output voltage,
V, of a solar cell as its temperature varies between 0o C and 75o C. As observed in
Figure 2.1, the maximum power output of the solar cells decreases as the cell temperature
4 increases. This indicates that overheating of the solar cells will decrease the output of
the solar panels significantly.

Figure 4: Power output of a ideal solar cell with varying temperatures

The water bodies that the floating solar panels rest on are projected to have a
cooling effect on the rear surface of the solar panels, hence reducing the temperature of
the photovoltaic cells and allowing them to generate more power than those set up on
land. With the probability of overheating reduced, the frequency of the photovoltaic cells
necessitating care will also decrease. Therefore, floating solar panels are expected to have
a higher power output and reduced maintenance requirements compared to the regular
solar panels installed on the ground or building rooftops.
2.5 INCREASING POTENTIAL OF HYDROELECTRIC DAMS
Integrating the innovation of floating solar panels with hydroelectric dams
improves the dams’ capability to generate electricity. By building floating solar panels on
the Figure 2.1.1: Power output of a ideal solar cell with varying temperatures
(Moharrama, Abd-Elhady, Kandil, & El-Sherif, 2013) 5 dam’s reservoirs, solar power
can be used to feed the transmission line. Thus, saving the water in the dam to generate
electricity on rainy days or at night. In the event of a drought, instead of hydroelectric
dams becoming a dead asset, the presence of floating solar panels will allow the
production of electricity to continue (Woody, 2011). Hence, the potential of hydroelectric
dams rises with the incorporation of floating solar panels.

Figure 5: Hydroelectric Dams

2.6 RESERVOIR BIODIVERSITY
Floating solar panels also has the proposed benefit of hindering destructive algae
growth by blocking the sunlight needed by the algae to grow (Woody, 2011). In a larger
picture, this indicates that floating solar installations over reservoirs can affect the
ecology of the floral and faunal communities in reservoirs. As Singapore’s reservoirs are
natural habitats of many organisms, the effect of floating solar panels on reservoir
biodiversity is highly relevant to Singapore’s context and should be thoroughly studied.
However, this is not a focus of this paper and will not be discussed further.

Figure 6: Reservoir Biodiversity

2.7 REDUCING EVAPORATION RATES
The first consideration in choosing the location to construct a solar power plant is
the availability of sunlight. While blessed with sunlight, these parts of the world face the
inevitable problem of high evaporation rates in their water reservoirs. Deployment of
floating solar installations in these sun-drenched regions will provide a ‘shade’ to the
water bodies and is predicted to reduce evaporation rates. This creates a ‘win-win’
situation where the power of solar energy is fully tapped and utilized while scarce water
reserves are protected with the drop in evaporation rates. Although SPG Solar proclaims
that reduction in evaporation rates are up to 70%, there have been no released evidence to
substantiate the claims till date.
 CHAPTER 3
PERFORMANCE OF SOLAR POWER PLANTS
3.1 SOLAR RADIATION BASICS AND DEFINITION
Solar radiation is a primary driver for many physical, chemical and biological
processes on the earth’s surface, and complete and accurate solar radiation data at a
specific region are of considerable significance for such research and application fields as
architecture, industry, agriculture, environment, hydrology, agrology, meteorology,
limnology, oceanography and ecology. Besides, solar radiation data are a fundamental
input for solar energy applications such as photovoltaic systems for electricity generation,
solar collectors for heating, solar air conditioning climate control in buildings and passive
solar devices [3].
Several empirical formulae have been developed to calculate the solar radiation
using various parameters. Some works used the sunshine duration others used the
sunshine duration, relative humidity and temperature, while others used the number of
rainy days, sunshine hours and a factor that depends on latitude and altitude.3 The
primary requirement for the design of any solar power project is accurate solar radiation
data. It is essential to know the method used for measuring data for accurate design. Data
may be instantaneously measured (irradiance) or integrated over a period of time
(irradiation) usually one hour or day.
Data maybe for beam, diffuse or total radiation, and for a horizontal or inclined
surface. It is also important to know the types of measuring instruments used for these
measurements.4 For the purpose of this report, data sources such as NREL, NASA, IMD
and so on were compared. All these sources specify global irradiance, measured over one
hour periods and averaged over the entire month. The data is available for horizontal
surfaces and must be suitably converted for inclined solar collectors.
Monthly average daily solar radiation on a horizontal surface is represented as H,
and hourly total radiation on a horizontal surface is represented by I. The solar spectrum,
or the range of wavelengths received from the Sun are depicted in the figure below. Short
wave radiation is received from the Sun, in the range of 0.3 to 3 μm, and long wave
radiation (greater than 3 μm) is emitted by the atmosphere, collectors or any other body at
ordinary temperatures.

Figure 7: Source Sen, Zekai, Solar energy fundamentals and modelling techniques
3.2 DEFINITIONS AND TERMINOLOGY
Beam Radiation – solar radiation received from the Sun without being scattered
by the atmosphere and propagating along the line joining the receiving surface and the
sun. It is also referred as direct radiation. It is measured by a pyrehiliometer.
Diffuse Radiation – the solar radiation received from the Sun after its direction
has been changed due to scattering by the atmosphere. It does not have a unique direction
and also does not follow the fundamental principles of optics. It is measured by shading
pyrenometer.
Total Solar Radiation – the sum of beam and diffused radiation on a surface.
The most common measurements of solar radiation is total radiation on a horizontal
surface often referred to as ‘global radiation’ on the surface. It is measured by
pyrenometer.
Irradiance (W/m2 ) – the rate at which incident energy is incident on a surface of
unit area. The symbol G is used to denote irradiation.
Irradiation (J/m2 ) – the incident energy per unit area on a surface, found by
integration of irradiation over a specified time, usually an hour (I) or a day (H).
 Solar Constant - The solar constant is the amount of incoming solar radiation per
unit area, measured at the outer surface of Earth’s atmosphere, in a plane perpendicular to
the rays
Direct Normal Insolation (DNI) - It is the direct component of the solar
radiation incident normal to the collector; that is, the angle of incidence of solar radiation
with the normal of the collector is zero throughout the day
3.3 MEASUREMENT OF SOLAR RADIATION
Measurements may be direct or indirect. Direct methods are those involving the
use of devices such as pyrheliometers and pyranometers at radiation stations. Indirect
methods use satellite data, the number of sunshine hours, or extrapolation to arrive at
values for radiation at a place. The solar radiation data should be measured continuously
and accurately over the long term. Unfortunately, in most areas of the world, solar
radiation measurements are not easily available due to financial, technical or institutional
limitations
Solar radiation is measured using pyrheliometers and pyranometers. Ångström
and Thermoelectric Pyrheliometers are used for measurement for direct solar radiation
and global solar radiation is measured using the Thermoelectric Pyranometer. A
Thermoelectric Pyranometer with a shading ring is used for measurement of diffuse
radiation. Inverted pyranometers and Sunphotometers are used for measuring reflected
solar irradiance and solar spectral irradiance and turbidity respectively
In India, large scale measurements are carried out by the India Meteorological
Department at 45 radiation observatories with data loggers at four of these stations.8 The
stations are depicted on the map below (Fig 2), obtained from the IMD Pune website.
Another method of acquiring data is through mathematical modeling and
extrapolation of data using variables such as sunshine hours, cloud cover and humidity.
This modeled data generally is not very accurate for several reasons. Models require
complex calibration procedures, detailed knowledge of atmospheric conditions and
adjustments to produce reasonable results. Further inaccuracies arise in micro-climates
and areas near mountains, large bodies of water, or snow cover.
 The third source of radiation data is satellite measured data such as that provided
by NASA. NASA data is available for any location on Earth, and can be obtained by
specifying the coordinates of the location. The data is available in near real time for daily
averages and for 3 hour intervals. Also, this data can be accessed free of cost online
3.4 SOURCES OF RADIATION DATA
 Meteonorm- Provides data of more than 8,055 weather stations. The
measured parameters are monthly means of global radiation, temperature,
humidity, precipitation, days with precipitation, wind speed and direction,
sunshine duration. Time periods 1961-90 and 1996-2005 for temperature,
humidity, precipitation and wind speed are available. Satellite data is used for
areas with low density of weather stations. Interpolation models are provided
in the software to calculate mean values for any site in the world. The user
may import data for use in the models. This data is not freely available, and
must be purchased along with the Meteonorm software.
 WRDC- WRDC (World Radiation Data Center) provides monthly irradiance
for 1195 sites in the world, averaged during periods between 1964 and 1993.
Many of them are only over a few years. These data doesn't include
temperatures, which should be obtained from another source. This data is
available free of cost. RETScreen RETScreen is Canadian software which
holds a complete database for any location in the world, optimised for using
the best available data at each location from about 20 sources, the main ones
being the WRDC and the NASA irradiance data. Temperatures and wind
velocities are also provided probably with good reliability. NASA and WRDC
data are available free of cost, and hence RETScreen data is also free.
 IMD- IMD has 45 radiation observatories recording various radiation
parameters. At all these stations, measurement of global solar radiation is
being carried out while at a few selected stations other parameters like diffuse,
direct, net, net-terrestrial and reflected radiation and atmospheric turbidity are
also measured. Data loggers have been introduced at four stations viz. New
Delhi, Patna, Jaipur and Thiruvanathapuram. Besides the measurements on the
surface, fortnightly airborne soundings are made with radio metersondes to
 measure directly the vertical distribution of the infrared radiation flux and
radiation cooling from surface upto a height of 20 Km or more in the free
atmosphere, at New Delhi, Srinagar, Thiruvananthapuram, Pune, Nagpur,
Jodhpur, Calcutta and Bhubaneshwar. Radiometersonde ascents are being
conducted regularly at Maitri, the Indian Antaractic station also.
 NASA- NASA provides over 200 satellite-derived meteorology and solar
energy parameters. These are monthly averages from 22 years of data. Global
solar energy data is available for 1195 ground sites. These data are available
free of cost.
 3TIER- 3TIER provides custom reports enabling assessment for commercial
and utilityscale solar projects. This organization provides FullView Solar Site
Climate Variability Analysis (CVA) which describes a complete picture of the
solar resources at required site. Based on a satellite derived 11 to 13-year
time-series, this product includes the intensity and variability of irradiance
values and additional data on wind speed and temperature.
3.5 COMPARISON OF VARIOUS SOURCES OF DATA
The radiation data can be used from all the above mentioned sources. However,
each has its own accuracy levels.
The satellite data has the following limitations:9
 The sensors generally cannot distinguish between clouds and snow cover.
 The measurements are less accurate near mountains, oceans or other large
bodies of water.
 All measurements are essentially made at the top of the atmosphere and
require atmospheric models to estimate the solar radiation at the ground.
NASA estimates that their measurements of average daily solar radiation have an
RMS error of 35 W/m2 (roughly 20% inaccuracy). The World Climate Research Program
estimated that routine-operational ground solar radiation sites had end-toend inaccuracies
of 6-12%, with the highest quality research sites in the range of 3- 6% inaccuracy.1 Other
researchers comparing NASA solar radiation measurements to ground-based sites have
found comparable results (19% average error in the daily data).
 Based on the merits and demerits of the different sources of radiation data, it can
be concluded that the most reliable data is obtained from ground based weather stations.
Therefore it is recommended that the IMD/MNRE Handbook of Solar Radiation at 23
locations based on actual measurements should be used for assessing the performance of
solar power plants. In locations where IMD is data is not available, NASA/Meteonorm
data may be used.
 CHAPTER 4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
4.1. COMPARING PENMAN WITH CONTROL
Table 4.1 presents the average weather parameters of the day, the potential
evaporation rate calculated using Penman equations and the measured drop in water level
of the control container.
Table 4.1: Estimated evaporation rates from Penman equation and experiment control

The calculated evaporation rate using Penman equation is plotted against the drop
in water level of the control container after correction with the pan coefficient, in a scatter
graph, as illustrated in Figure 4.1. Under ideal conditions, the two sets of results are
expected to be identical. The closer the scatter plots are to the identity line, indicates the
similarity of the two sets of results. If the two data sets are equal to each other, the scatter
plot will fall exactly on the identity line.
 Figure 8 : Plot of ET0 against PET compared against identity line
As mentioned in section 2.4.1, Penman equation is a combination of mass transfer
and energy budget methodologies, Harwell (2012) stated in his report that numerous
researches have revealed that estimation of evaporation rates from evaporation pans
commonly fall within 20% of energy-budget and water-budget estimates. Observed in
Figure 5, the scatter plots all fall within the 20% error range of the identity line. The
errors bars with caps marked in black indict the error range. Hence, it is fair to conclude
that the experiment setup is a realistic imitation of conditions at a reservoir