Today is Monday, November 27, 2023
First floating solar plant in Latin America installed in an already exhausted mining pit.
This was the headline a few days ago on the renowned news portal Estadão, an article published in several other media outlets. This is a project by F2B – Fotovoltaico Flutuante Brasil implemented at the Grupo AB Areias mining unit, in the municipality of Roseira, São Paulo.
An exhausted pit is nothing more than an area resulting from mining activity, which usually ends up becoming a lake. This is very common, for example, in sand extraction, a wet process, as is the case with this project.
And placing solar panels on water sheets - lakes and canals - helps not only generate renewable energy, but also reduce evaporation.
Floating solar panels are nothing new. But what is perhaps surprising is the relative lack of attention to its potential.
See this article from a few weeks ago, with a provocative headline: "Solar panels on water canals seem like a no-brainer. So why aren't they widespread? One study estimates that covering California's canals with solar panels could generate enough energy to power Los Angeles for most of the year.".
There are also initiatives like this in the Netherlands, which we reported on about 2 years ago, about testing flexible floating solar panels that move with the waves.
A consortium led by Dutch research institute TNO seeks to create economically viable offshore solar farms. According to the project manager, it is still "technically very challenging to install large floating systems with solar panels at sea and keep them operational for decades." In addition to economic issues, waves and strong winds, as well as the growth of organic matter such as algae will be points of attention in the project. The idea is to fill offshore areas where wind farms are already installed.
Returning to the project in Roseira, according to the Brasil Mineral portal, the plant with 1,852 thousand solar panels installed on top of floats began operating last October and will meet the total electricity demand of the mining company's unit, reducing electricity costs. and expansion of the company's sustainability programs.
The project has support from the state development bank of the State of São Paulo, Desenvolve SP, with disbursements of around R$ 5.3 million, for an expected average energy generation between 100 thousand kW/h and 120 thousand kW/h.
Click on the image below for a post on LinkedIn by Orestes Gonçalves Júnior, director of F2B, when the project began.
And here for more recent publications also on LinkedIn by the AB Areias Group itself:
- Start of operations; and
