– credit, courtesy of Sembcorp
How do you decarbonize a city state? With so little space, so many demands on power, and so many citizens, generating any meaningful electricity from renewable energy is a major challenge for urban planners.
But over its history, the planners of Singapore have shown themselves to be nothing if not resourceful, and so maybe it’s no surprise they’re set to begin construction on an 86-megawatt solar farm.
The surprise though comes from where they’ve built it—on top of the country’s largest reservoir—forming a floating solar farm that will join two others already present on two other reservoirs.
The contractor, Singapore-based engineering firm Sembcorp Solar Singapore, won the bidding process with designs for an 86MW PV solar farm on Pandan Reservoir, issued by Singapore’s national water agency.
It will be the third such floating solar farm built by Sembcorp, with the other two located on Singapore’s two other reservoirs. One was built in 2021, and another was commissioned this year by Facebook parent company Meta to power the data center for its local subsidiary.
All tolled, the solar panels will generate 296 megawatts of clean energy.
“Floating solar projects at reservoirs like Pandan, Tengeh and Kranji are vital for Singapore’s land-scarce energy landscape,” said Ms. Jen Tan, CEO of Sembcorp Solar Singapore.
SOLAR PROJECTS, SOLAR PROGRESS:
Floating solar installations have a unique benefit to terrestrially-mounted panel arrays, which is that the water underneath helps keep their electronics cool even while their black surfaces bake in the tropical sun. When properly cooled, panels can produce around 2% more power.
Other installations such as rooftop panel arrays mean that Singapore actually generates over 1,000 megawatt-hours of solar energy, half of what the city-state plans to install by 2030. It will be fascinating to see where they put the next solar array, having run out of reservoirs.
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