Feasibility study of floating photovoltaic panels in the Adriatic Sea

The urge to obtain renewable energy has been quickly developed lately all around the planet and solutions became miscellaneous so they are distributed, not only in inland, but also in offshore locations. Despite expensive solutions like wind turbines, floating solar system is becoming cheapest option and it is one of the several marine renewable energies that is already in use at a number of sites around the world. The main purpose of this paper is to show a case study of a solar floating photovoltaic park in the Adriatic zone with a capacity of generating 24755 kWh/year. Between three different structural solutions presented with their advantages and disadvantages, one of them has been adopted. The structural system is square shaped with an internal rotating platform, the complex is constructed using polypropylene (PP) and recycled polypropylene (rPP) pipes. In the paper, the dimension of the tubes and the panel supports have been studied as well as the behavior of the PP. The last part was dedicated to an economic and finance analysis of the investment and the necessary number of years to obtain positive cash flow through the NPV and PBT methods. The results show that solar panels are, from economic point of view, convenient and are considered a feasible investment especially for large scale projects.