Fish are disappearing near floating solar farms.
Plankton numbers were also declining around the solar arrays. Floating solar farms can help to reduce evaporation in bodies of water. However, researchers have recently found that clean energy was “choking” the water beneath the solar panels.
How are floating solar farms suffocating the water beneath them?
What are the consequences of the world adopting floating solar farms
Floating solar farms, often referred to as floatovoltaics, sit on bodies of water. Like lakes or reservoirs.
The concept seems simple enough and is attractive to those climate-conscious among us. But why is underwater life vanishing around them? What has led to this development on floating solar farms?
Unused bodies of water are supposed to serve a purpose: make clean energy possible through floating solar farms.
Initially, it seemed like the perfect clean-energy compromise. However, as more floatovoltaics emerged, researchers noticed something odd. The water beneath them was changing. And the issue was invisible to us on the surface.
What is causing this unintended choking of the water?
What exactly did the researchers find beneath the floating solar farms
A team of experts surveyed 26 bodies of water in China’s Yangtze River basin.
They studied everything from water chemistry to bird communities around floating solar farms. Some floatovoltaics use floating panels on the surface. Others opt to use raised structures above the water.
Onshore solar farms are known to attract certain species of birds.
But floating solar farms are far different. The researchers found that environmental shifts were taking place underneath the panels. Water beneath the panels became remarkably cooler than normal. But cooler water was just the first warning from nature.
The question is why? What is causing this “choking” of the water?
They also found that dissolved oxygen levels plummeted around floating solar farms. The world of marine life needs oxygen. It supports their growth and survival.
Scientists also found that plankton species were dramatically lower around floating solar farms.
These minuscule organisms are at the bottom of the food chain. Meaning that when their numbers decline, everything above them in the food chain is affected. The fishies that feed on plankton are forced into a diet.
While offshore wind farms have been attracting fish, floating solar farms are doing the opposite.
The question to answer becomes, how are these floating solar arrays causing such devastation? The study, “Water-surface photovoltaic systems have affected water physical and chemical properties and biodiversity,” published in Nature, has provided the answers.
How are floating solar farms actually choking the water beneath them
The development is contrary to what is taking place on land.
Onshore solar farms have been creating their own “life” in some cases. So why the drastic difference in floating solar farms? The problem starts with the source of the solar panels’ energy: the Sun.
Floating solar arrays actually block sunlight from hitting the water. This is the hidden problem we are unable to see.
Which sounds good at first. Surely reducing evaporation and overheating on bodies of water is positive? But lakes depend on sunlight for survival. The sunlight enables plankton and tiny algae to photosynthesize.
Without enough sunshine, their number drop dramatically.
One missed step in the global food chain can lead to disaster
Photosynthesis produces oxygen, even underwater.
Less oxygen means fewer fish and other creatures. This choking of the water means that the food chain abruptly stops. Without tiny algae and plankton to feed on, the marine life is left empty-stomached.
Fish then lose not only their oxygen, but also their first source of food.
So the floating solar farms are not poisoning the water, but they are choking the air out of it. This unintended and unexpected effect from solar power is just the latest problem for the sector.
Hopefully, a solution to this new problem can be found.