‘Limitless’ energy: how floating solar panels near the equator could power future population hotspots::New research shows densely populated countries in Southeast Asia and West Africa could harvest effectively unlimited energy from solar panels floating on calm tropical seas near the equator.
If these are too big then presumably it’ll block sunlight from that patch - that not a bad thing? I assume you’d need a lot for it to have an effect and the sea is pretty big…
Yeah, any time I see one of these “big ideas!” I’m super skeptical… our solutions aren’t going to be easy innovations. They’re going to be hard, boring fixes.
One benefit is “cooling” the water underneath as we’re running into record high sea temps.
Smaller panels spread out would be better since they can let in a decent average amount of light vs a big ass panel blocking everything in one area. But then you run into the issues of connecting all of those panels and that makes getting the power out of the ocean and into your house even harder.
It would affect the small area underneath, though we are struggling with ocean warming atm so anything blocking sunlight in is probably good.