When it comes to FPV solution providers, our survey has inputs from most market leaders. In our previous article, we explained how the FPV market has grown over the last few years (see Global FPV Market Developments). This time, we look into the market leaders in this segment.
Sungrow FPV is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sungrow Group, the undisputed market leader in the FPV segment. The Chinese company has provided solutions for more than 220 projects with a total capacity exceeding 2.6 GW. While most of the projects executed by the company are located in Southeast Asia and China, the company made breakthroughs in some other regions like Africa, Europe and Australia. The applications of the company are diversified with respect to different water bodies including reservoirs, inland rivers, fishing ponds, lakes, snowy areas, industrial ponds, regions with typhoons and even offshore locations. The company also has a strong IP portfolio with more than 200 patents related to FPV in the areas of floating body, anchor system, as well as inverter & booster floating platforms.
Sungrow manufactures HDPE floats, module brackets that support the PV panel on the floats, and the brackets for the combiner boxes and the apertures along with mooring and anchoring. In addition to having the manufacturing capability in-house, the company also cooperates with several OEM suppliers for overseas projects. It also offers project design for the power plant layout. Sungrow advises its customers regarding anchoring, the placement of inverter and combiner boxes, as well as the number of modules per stream as part of the system engineering. In other words, Sungrow offers a one-stop solution.
Ciel & Terre is the second largest company in the floating segment with a deep understanding of the technology. The French company started out as a specialist in the integration of rooftop and ground-mounted systems, then stepped into the FPV segment in 2011, at a time when there were only a few pilot systems in the world that were based on different technologies. Ciel & Terre invented the HDPE-type floating bodies, which are assembled together to make a floating PV system. At that time, there was not even a single supplier that could make a scalable platform and attain industrial scale, according to Thomas Wattinne, product marketing manager, Ciel & Terre.
The first MW-size industrialized floating solar system in the world was installed by Ciel & Terre in Japan in 2013. Taking this lead, the company has entered several other markets offering FPV solutions for commercial, industrial, and local institutions. The company now has a global presence with more than 300 FPV installations in more than 30 countries on 5 continents. This experience and expertise gained over the period have helped Ciel & Terre to become a leading technology provider of FPV. The lessons learned from one project can sometimes be directly implemented at another project or provide the basis for developing a new solution altogether, according to Wattinne. In June 2023, Ciel & Terre announced that it exceeded 1.5 GW of floating projects, including 850 MW in operation and 650 MW under construction or contracted.
Ciel & Terre not only supplies floaters, but also provides a full package of services, including design, engineering, anchoring, installation, and maintenance, as well as operations sometimes, which entirely depends on the project location. "In the US or Brazil, Ciel & Terre offers complete engineering scope of the FPV system, and in some regions such as Taiwan, Japan, India and part of Europe, we can also provide anchoring and floating platform installations and maintenance," says Wattinne.
Since the beginning, Ciel & Terre mainly relies on OEM with close control of the process and quality. In 2022, the company set up its own factory in India to be more competitive in this particular region. The company mainly supports local manufacturing to bring value to local economies, offer competitive supply, and reduce logistics-related carbon footprint.
Stay tuned for upcoming articles featuring other companies that participated in TaiyangNews.
The text is an excerpt from the TaiyangNews Floating PV 2024 Report, which can be downloaded for free here.