Heliofloat is a flexible, football-field-sized solar panel that floats in the ocean

By Kelly Hodgkins April 28, 2016

solar power heliofloat heliofloat1 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Offshore wind farms are growing in popularity as energy providers look for different ways of harvesting power from the sun without using valuable land resources. One unique idea being developed by engineers at Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) is a floating platform called a Heliofloat that would function as a sea-based solar power station.

As detailed by the Vienna engineers, the Heliofloat is an open-bottom, flexible float as large as a football field and covered from edge to edge with solar panels. Heliofloats can operate as standalone platforms for smaller operations with moderate energy requirements. Multiple heliofloats also can be connected together, forming a floating solar-harvesting power grid.

Each 100-meter heliofloat is designed to stay upright even in the worst weather. Like most platforms, the Heliofloat is constructed using barrels to provide flotation, but it differs in one major way — each Heliofloat barrel is made from a soft flexible material that is open to the sea. This open-bottom, flexible material traps air at the top of each barrel, operating much like a ballast tank at the bottom of a sub. This system creates an air pocket that acts like a shock absorber in rough weather. The soft sides of the barrel also flex when hit by waves, allowing the system to remain stable in high seas.

Not only is the heliofloat stable, its open-bottom design makes the structure lightweight and affordable to build. A similar sized, closed-bottom platform made of rigid air-filled barrels would sway and break under the pressure of massive waves. And to withstand rough water, the closed bottom structure would need to be so large that it would become impractical to build and use at sea.

Researchers found the Heliofloat technology to be so promising that they created a spinoff company to develop the platform idea for a range of industries. “Heliofloat platforms offer new possibilities for desalination plants and biomass extraction processes for salt water,” said Dr Roland Eisl, a Vienna University of Technology graduate and director of Heliofloat GmbH.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Contributor

Kelly's been writing online for ten years, working at Gizmodo, TUAW, and BGR among others. Living near the White Mountains of…

Emerging Tech

On the fence about buying solar panels? Tesla now offers them for rent

If you’ve been trying to decide whether or not to purchase solar panels for your home, Tesla has a new way to entice you: Renting them.
With solar rentals, Tesla says “customers get the best from solar power — clean, cheap energy to power homes and vehicles — without upfront costs or decades-long agreements. In fact, customers can get solar power with one click, instead of lengthy consultations and piles of paperwork.”
The company is offering the option to rent solar panels in six states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New Mexico.

In order to participate, you need to be the homeowner and be a ratepayer with one of the specific utility companies Telsa is working with in your state. Rentals include the panels, as well as any other necessary hardware, installation, support, and maintenance costs.
The company is offering the service in small, medium, and large sizes. A small system is 3.8 kilowatts, a medium system is 7.6 kW, and a large one is 11.4 kW. Monthly rental costs for a small system vary by state and range from $50 to $65 a month. Tesla also has some estimates on how much power those panels are expected to generate each year.
Like all good deals, there is a catch: If you decide you don’t want to rent solar from Tesla anymore, you’ll be forced to pay a $1,500 removal fee to the company to take down the equipment. That fee can’t be waived. However, if you decide to sell your home you can transfer the monthly subscription to your home’s new owners, so you don’t have to remove the panels from your roof prior to the sale.
Panels can be upgraded once you install them, but can not be downgraded unless you want to pay that $1,500 fee.
Last year, Tesla started working with Panasonic on a new catalog of solar panels that blend into a customer’s roof, with no visible hardware. The panels were first announced in 2017, but were installed on their first roof in early 2018.
Tesla’s solar panel rental program comes days after the company lowered the price of its solar panels, in some cases dropping the price per watt to as low was $1.75, 16% lower than the national average of $2.09.

Cars

France’s first-ever solar panel road appears to have some serious issues

the ray paves way to future wattway road

There was much excitement surrounding France’s first-ever solar road when it opened to traffic in 2016, but it appears that the plan to draw energy from the special surface has fallen well short of expectations.

The Wattway, as it’s called, is a 1-kilometer (0.62-mile) stretch of road covered in 2,800 photovoltaic panels in the Normandy village of Tourouvre-au-Perche in the north part of the country.

Emerging Tech

A giant new solar farm in Texas will harness the sun’s rays to … brew beer?

Aerial Solar Image

Since 1926, Pecos County, Texas has been home to one of the largest oil fields in the United States. To date, it has produced more than a billion barrels of oil and, experts suggest, there is another billion barrels yet to be tapped.

But drive through Pecos County a couple of years from now, and it might not be the giant Yates Oil Field that most commands your attention. Rather, your eye may be drawn by an enormous solar power farm, on track to be the seventh largest ever built, stretching as far as the eye can see, for around 2,000 acres in total. As Angie Slaughter, one of the people behind the project, told Digital Trends, that’s “about 1,500 football fields of nothing but solar panels.”