The use of floating photovoltaics (PVs) in offshore environments is rare due to harsh marine conditions. The EU-funded NATURSEA-PV project will develop innovative structural designs capable of handling marine conditions, ensuring durability and minimising (un)installation costs. NATURSEA-PV will improve the overall lifetime, reliability and maintainability of marine substructures for offshore floating PVs and reduce LCOE by using newly developed, environmentally friendly, low-carbon ultra-high-performance concrete. The project will also create a specific predictive simulation toolkit to evaluate mechanical and chemical durability of the new materials. Finally, project partners will collaborate with associations, public bodies and regulators to assess the implementation barriers and potential impacts on the socio-economic activities and the environment, propose corrective measurements and ensure social acceptance of the technology.
Objective
The green transition strategy of the EU aims to a climate neutral economy by increasing the use of renewable energy sources, being offshore floating photovoltaics (PV) one of the target technologies. Although floating PV is already used in shallow inland waters, its use in offshore environments is not common due to the harsh marine conditions and thus requires a revamping of the technology. The main objective of NaturSea-PV is to improve the overall lifetime, reliability, and maintainability of marine substructures for offshore floating PVs and thus reduce its LCOE. For this, NaturSea-PV will develop innovative structural designs capable of handling the marine conditions, at the same time ensuring the durability and minimizing (un)installation costs. The substructures will be built using newly developed environmentally friendly low carbon ultra high performance concrete and will be coated with new biobased antifouling and anticorrosive coatings. A specific predictive simulation toolkit will be developed to assess the mechanical and chemical durability of the new materials under marine conditions and will be validated against experimental data. The new materials and structural design will be first validated in the laboratory (testing), then integrated in prototypes to check the buildability and to be validated in relevant environments. NaturSea-PV will co-develop and co-validate the project results with external stakeholders while assessing the potential environmental and social impacts and perception to verify that the proposed solutions compatible with existing regulations and socio-economic activities taking part in the sea to maximize the impact of offshore floating-PV solutions. The results and knowledge from the project will be managed to have the most effective exploitation (e.g. IP) and widest possible communication and dissemination to forward the implementation of successful floating PV substructures with circular materials and low, competitive, LCOE.
