South East Asia countries has great sun resources, it should have been the heaven for solar systems, but the shortcoming is the land, there is not enough land for those countries to develop massive ground based pv plants like in China, India and US, but they have a unique teritorial advantage can be explored... which is the open waters.
Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US have analyzed the technical potential for floating PV (FPV) in the 10 countries that are part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The assessment, which is the first-of-its-kind for Southeast Asia, included 88 reservoirs, including hydropower and non-hydropower facilities, and 7,213 natural waterbodies in the final dataset.
The group found that the FPV technical potential for the region ranges from 134–278 GW on reservoirs and 343–768 GW on natural waterbodies. When waterbody types are taken into consideration, the technical potential for FPV is higher on reservoirs in Laos and Malaysia, while natural waterbodies hold the greater potential in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. The potential is equivalent across waterbody types in Vietnam.
Thailand had the top potential for FPV on reservoirs, with 576 suitable waterbodies, a capacity of 57,645 MW, and generation of 83,781 GWh/Year. The top potential for FPV on natural waterbodies was found in Indonesia, which has 2,719 suitable waterbodies, 271,897 MW of capacity, and 369,059 GWh/year of generation.
“Overall, these findings indicate significant technical potential for FPV in each country and across the region,” the researchers said. “Several countries have ambitious renewable energy targets, mainly focused on solar, hydropower, and wind deployment. FPV presents an additional RE option that can leverage existing infrastructure, especially existing hydropower capacity, and support ongoing and increasingly ambitious decarbonization efforts in the region.”
Their findings are available in the report “Enabling Floating Solar Photovoltaic (FPV) Deployment: FPV Technical Potential Assessment for Southeast Asia,” published on NREL’s website. The study is claimed to “help policymakers and planners better understand the role that FPV could play in meeting regional energy demand and could ultimately help inform investment decisions.”
