Floating solar: an end-run around NIMBYism

We really have to counteract the anti-solar propaganda, and promote agrivoltaics to dispel the perception of false choice (either farmland or solar, not both). But some folks in Ohio are working on an alternative where they can sidestep those arguments entirely: floating solar panels on reservoirs.

A team of 12 engineers and construction workers are busily connecting more than 3,400 solar arrays to small, floating docks and distributing them across four acres of the reservoir’s surface water.

The electricity generated by the floating photovoltaics will be used to power a nearby water treatment plant, where electricity-powered pumps run 24 hours a day, year-round.

“The water treatment plant is one of the city’s biggest energy costs; it only made sense to put the floating solar site here,” says Sara Weekley, deputy director of Lima’s utilities department.