The new hot trend in renewable energy technologies seems to be to test whether it will float, and a new report from the World Bank published last week revealed that there is currently 1.1 gigawatt (GW) worth of floating solar around the globe and that the market could potentially support up to 400 GW worth of total capacity.
We have been hearing about floating solar projects for a while now(for a whileで暫時だけどnowがつくとここんとこ暫くって感じ？) ? and they have become particularly popular in Asia, where the local topography(地形学・地誌・地勢図と英辞郎にあるが単に"地勢"ぐらいのニュアンスっぽい) is more likely to provide ideal locations for the combination of water and solar. According to the new report published by the World Bank, Where Sun Meets Water, floating solar is “particularly promising(be 〜：特に約束されている→とりわけ見込みがある)” for the fast-growing economies of Asia, and interest has been high in places like China, India, and Southeast Asia.
According to the report, “capacity for floating solar is growing exponentially” ? a fact borne out by the figures; specifically, at the end of 2014, total global floating solar capacity had only reached 10 megawatts (MW), but as of September 2018, that figure had increased more than 100-fold to 1.1 GW.
Current capacity is not the only bright spot(輝点・楽しい出来事→一時的な最盛期ぐらいの意味？) from the floating solar sector, according to the report, which estimates that the sector could potentially support 400 GW worth of total capacity. More specifically(特に・明確に・厳密に云えば・具体的に→"よりはっきりいえば"更には"ぶっちゃけ"，ぐらいのニュアンスか？), this is referring to conservative estimates of floating solar’s global potential when installed on man-made water surfaces ? although, such reservoirs(容器・溜池・貯蔵庫→浮体式というと海上の凄い奴って想像しちゃうけど日本でも溜め池水上発電結構あるな。発熱も抑制できていいみたい) total more than 400,000 square kilometers, so the high-end of potential enters the terawatt scale.
“Floating solar passing the 1 GW milestone is very impressive, considering it came from just 10 MW in 2014,” explained Kristina Thoring, the Communications Director at SolarPower Europe. “It is now a proven market sector and we expect to see many more floating solar projects in Europe and the world in the coming years.”
In addition to providing renewable energy generation, floating solar has the added benefit of working well with other projects ? be they hydropower projects or agricultural systems. The report also outlines the regional potential, which is primarily led by North America, followed by the Middle East & Asia, and Africa.
I asked SolarPower Europe’s Kristina Thoring what she thought of the potential for floating solar in Europe. According to the report, Europe is on the smaller scale of available surface area and potential capacity, but Thoring was nevertheless up-beat(上拍→(口)楽天的な・陽気な) about the potential.
“There is huge potential for floating solar in Europe,” she said. …(以下略)
