The Netherlands – In the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant, Geertruidenberg, RWE has put into operation its first floating photovoltaic (PV) project, which consists of about 13,400 solar panels floating on a lake close to the Amer power plant.
Peak installed capacity for the cutting-edge solar field is 6.1 megawatts (MWp). The Amer power plant’s third solar installation, the floating project, was the most recent.
The lake where the solar panels float once served as a source of cooling water. The lake is perfect for floating panels because it hasn’t been used for that purpose in many years, it has no direct access to the Amer river nearby, and it lacks that connection. The panels are secured at 104 points to 52 concrete blocks buried in the lake’s bottom to prevent them from drifting away in high winds and hitting the surrounding dike. Each of these blocks weighs 4.6 tons. Electrical connections between the panels and the shore have been made using a total of 25 kilometers of cable. The grid of the power plant is supplied with the generated electricity.
Solar Park Amer
With the installation of more than 2,000 PV panels with 0.5 MWp on the roof of its power plant, RWE completed the first phase of Solar Park Amer in 2018. RWE added ground-mounted PV installations in 2021 to further increase the capacity. Since last summer, there have been 5,760 total panels in use. The total installed capacity of Solar Park Amer has increased from 0.5 to 9 MWp with the commissioning of the floating project. This is sufficient to power 2,300 typical Dutch homes.
