Floating Solar Photovoltaics (FPV) is a strategic growth area in FOR. The Fred. Olsen-related companies’ 170 years of global experience from shipping, offshore construction, offshore energy production, and renewable power production, is used to manage technical and financial risks in our projects. We want to take a first-mover position as project developer, owner and operator in selected countries in Asia and Southern Europe, and FOR will typically team up with one leading and financially strong local power producer in each country we target.
Our projects will open new opportunities for solar generating capacity, especially in countries with high population density and competing uses for available land. To date all large-scale commercial FPV capacity has been installed on in-land freshwater bodies, e.g. dams and lakes.
Moving FPV into the sea represents the next big step forward for FPV, and this opens many new opportunities to populous coastal cities and island states to generate clean solar power at scale. At the same time, the harsher marine environment imposes stringent requirements on floats, anchors, moorings, and components.
To accelerate the technology development for near- and off-shore FPV, while managing the associated risks, we have initiated two key innovation projects. The first through our research collaboration agreement with SERIS (Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore) and the second with support from the European Union, the BOOST project (Bringing Offshore Ocean Sun to the global market).