Touted to be the world's largest offshore floating solar power plant with 1 GW planned capacity, the Shandong Dongying Kenli project is now under construction in China's Shandong province.
With its center located 8 km off the coast, the floating PV plant is coming up in the waters of Laizhou Bay in Dongying city.
According to local media reports, the offshore project site has been surveyed and designed by East China Institute of Power China. The depth of water on site is 1-4 meters.
Power China says the project design of the 1 GW plant is such that it will reduce the number of offshore pile foundations and platforms. The design has been verified by experts, it added. On completion, it is expected to generate 1.78 billion kWh.
Referring to the project's feasibility study report, local media reports had earlier said the project will use monocrystalline silicon solar PV modules and cost RMB 8 billion ($1.1 billion).
The project is a winner of the Shandong government's 11.25 GW offshore solar tender launched in May 2022 (see Chinese Province Planning 11.25 GW Offshore Solar). Local Chinese media portal Seetao had earlier released the list of bigger offshore solar power plants approved by Shandong province with 11.25 GW combined capacity in response to the tender.
Along with the abundant sunshine, the other biggest advantage of an offshore solar PV plant is that it foregoes the use of expensive land. However, deploying solar modules on the surface of salty sea water has its own challenges in terms of corrosion, and rough weather.
Offshore solar power plants are being explored across the globe at present, but the scale is not as big as 1 GW. In August 2023, however, Chint Solar said it had signed an agreement with China's Pingyang county in Zhejiang province for a 2 GW offshore solar PV project. Its construction is expected to begin in 2024 (see China Solar PV News Snippets).
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