Off the coast of Shandong province, more than five miles out to sea, a fleet of 2,934 solar platforms now hums with electricity. On November 13, 2024 C.E., China’s state-owned CHN Energy activated a 1-gigawatt offshore floating solar installation near the city of Dongying — the largest of its kind ever built. It can generate 1.78 billion kilowatt-hours of power each year, enough to meet the energy needs of roughly 2.6 million urban residents.
At a glance
- Offshore floating solar: The Dongying installation sits 8 kilometers off the Shandong coast and marks the first time a 66-kilovolt offshore cable paired with an onshore cable has been used for high-capacity, long-distance solar transmission in China.
- Steel truss platforms: Each of the 2,934 platforms measures 60 meters long and 35 meters wide, mounted on pile-driven foundations designed to endure open-water conditions year-round.
- Clean energy output: At 1.78 billion kilowatt-hours annually, the farm avoids a significant volume of coal-fired generation in a province that has historically relied heavily on fossil fuels.
Why the ocean makes sense
Land is expensive and contested. In a densely populated country like China, every hectare given to solar competes with agriculture, housing, and ecosystems. Moving panels offshore sidesteps that pressure entirely.
There are engineering benefits too. Seawater keeps panels cooler than rooftops or desert ground, which can improve efficiency. And unlike onshore farms, offshore installations don’t require clearing land or removing vegetation. The Dongying project was developed by Guohua Energy Investment Co., a subsidiary of CHN Energy, which ranks among China’s largest state-owned power producers.
The sea also offers something less obvious: scale. Open water allows installations to expand without the patchwork of land permits, local objections, and competing uses that complicate terrestrial solar development.
Engineering a farm that survives the ocean
Building solar infrastructure offshore is not simple. Saltwater corrodes metal. Waves and wind stress structures constantly. Marine fouling — barnacles, algae, mollusks — can destabilize floating platforms over time. And a major storm can undo years of construction.
The Dongying farm addresses this through large-scale steel truss platforms fixed to pile foundations, a design that provides stability rather than relying on free-floating buoyancy. This anchored approach differs from purely floating systems and is well-suited to the relatively shallow, sheltered waters of the Bohai Sea.
Other companies are tackling the open-ocean problem differently. SolarDuck, a Dutch-Norwegian firm spun out of Damen Shipyards in 2019 C.E., has developed modular triangular platforms that link into hexagonal arrays and flex with wave motion. Their offshore-grade aluminum is rated for 30 or more years of saltwater exposure. A 10-degree panel tilt uses rainwater for natural cleaning. The company is testing a 0.5-megawatt pilot called Merganser in the North Sea near Ostend, Belgium, in partnership with German utility RWE.
A rapidly expanding field
China is not alone in exploring offshore solar. The Netherlands and Singapore have both piloted floating solar technologies in coastal and near-shore environments. In May 2024 C.E., China National Nuclear Corp broke ground on a 2-gigawatt offshore solar plant near Jiangsu province, sited near the warm-water discharge zone of the Tianwan nuclear plant — a pairing that could improve overall energy efficiency at the site.
The broader context is striking. According to Time Magazine, China has invested more than $400 billion in clean energy technologies, generating more than 32 million jobs in the process. That investment is visible in the pace of deployment: offshore floating solar has moved from concept to gigawatt-scale reality in less than a decade.
Globally, the International Renewable Energy Agency notes that solar power capacity has grown faster than any other energy source, with floating variants — both freshwater and marine — becoming a meaningful slice of new additions. Researchers have also begun studying whether panels placed over irrigation canals and reservoirs can reduce evaporation while generating power, a dual benefit with particular value in water-scarce regions.
Challenges that remain
Offshore solar carries real costs that onshore installations don’t. Maintenance is harder and more expensive when your equipment sits miles out to sea in a corrosive environment. The ecological impact on marine ecosystems beneath and around large floating arrays is still not fully understood — shading, altered water temperatures, and changes to local currents could all affect marine life in ways researchers are only beginning to study.
The Dongying installation is an achievement, but it is also an early data point in a technology that will need decades of performance data before its full promise — and full risk profile — becomes clear.
Still, for a world that needs enormous amounts of new clean power without consuming more land, the ocean is starting to look less like an obstacle and more like an opportunity. China has just shown what a gigawatt of that opportunity looks like in practice.
Read more
For more on this story, see: CleanTechnica
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- Ghana establishes a new marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- The Good News for Humankind archive on China
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