Floating Solar Farms, also called Floating Photovoltaic (FPV) systems are solar power systems that are installed on the surface of bodies of water.
Image source: Ocean Sun
With FPV systems, instead of mounting solar panels on land or rooftops, they are attached to floating structures that keep them on water surfaces. These floating platforms (usually made from high-density polyethylene) keep the panels afloat, while anchors and mooring lines keep the entire setup stable and in place. Electricity from the floating panels are carried to an onshore facility or grid by submersible cables.
Some of the world’s largest floating solar farms by capacity are:
- CHN Energy’s 1GW Floating Solar PV facility in Shandong (China): This 1 GW open-sea offshore solar project is reportedly the largest open-sea floating solar farm in the world so far in 2025. It is located in Kenli District, east of Dongying City in Shandong province of China. It is spread across 1,223 hectares, about 8km off the coast of Dongying City and has over 2,900 PV platforms. This project utilizes the sustainable approach of integrating fishing and solar power, combining fish farming and solar power generation.
- Anhui Fuyang Floating Solar Farm (China): This project, located in Fuyang, Anhui province of China sits on a flooded area previously used for coal mining. The project has a total installed capacity of 650 MW, and also integrates solar power generation and fishing. It is a part of the larger 1.2 GW Southern Fuyang Wind-Solar-Storage Project.
- Omkareshwar Dam Floating Solar Farm (India): This project is a 600 MW full capacity project in Madhya Pradesh, India. The phase 1 with 278 MW capacity has been commissioned.
- 550 MW Wenzhou Taihan Project (China): This is a fishing and solar integrated project at Wenzhou Bay in Zhejiang, China. It has an installed capacity of 550 MW and expected to provide about 650 million KWh electricity annually, sufficient to power 130,000 households. It is reported that connecting this project to the Wenzhou power grid increased the clean energy generation capacity by about 26%.
- 400 MW Floating Solar Project in Laizhou Bay (China): This project, located in Zhaoyuan City, spans over an area of about 6.44 square kilometers, with 121 PV sub-arrays. The project uses Grand Sunergy’s seapower double-sided, double-glass heterojunction solar modules, due to the adverse effects of offshore environments on some solar modules.
- Dezhou Dingzhuang, Shandong (China): The Dezhou Dingzhuang floating solar farm is a 320 MW reservoir-mounted plant located in Shandong, China. This floating solar park is part of a larger renewable energy project that also incorporates a 100 MW wind farm.
- Cirata Reservoir Floating PV Power Project (Indonesia): The Cirata floating solar plant was developed by a joint venture of UAE-based renewable energy company, Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) and Indonesia’s PLN Nusantara Power. The power plant has 340,000 PV panels with a capacity of 145 MWac (192 MWp) of clean electricity.
- The 150 MW Three Gorges FPV (China): Built on a post-coal mine lake in Huainan by Three Gorges, this project is serving about 94,000 homes.
- The 100MW Ramagundam Floating Solar Project (India): The project is situated on a balancing reservoir, spanning 500 acres. This power plant, fully operational as of July 1, 2022, consists of 40 blocks; each with 2.5 MW capacity, a floating platform and an array of 11,200 solar modules.
- The 92 MW Floating Solar at Kayamkulam (India): The Kayamkulam project is situated on the reservoir of the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC)’s gas-based power station in Kayamkulam, Kerala. The project was commissioned in stages. The initial 22MW phase started in March, followed by a 35MW phase in May, and the final 35 MW in June 2022.