Floating solar park ideal future use for Hambach coal mine – researcher

Plans by Swiss technology company and solar panel manufacturer Meyer Burger to supply panels for a 10 gigawatt (GW) floating solar plant on a lake to be left behind by the future closure of the Hambach coal mine is gaining support from the local scientific community. In an interview with local radio station Radio Rur, Uwe Rau, director of the Institute for Energy and Climate Research at the Forschungszentrum Jülich research centre, described the company’s proposal in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia as “perfect and absolutely feasible”. Noting that it was an ideal situation for the region, Rau said installing solar parks in opencast mines and replacing coal-fired power stations would offer a double advantage. Electricity pylons and lines leading away from coal-fired power plants would not have to be dismantled and erected elsewhere. “It also fits in very well in terms of scale: the solar park could generate just as much electricity as all of today's coal-fired power plants in [North Rhine-Westphalia’s] Rhenish mining district combined.”

Meyer Burger is developing plans to build a state-of-the-art solar panel factory in Germany which would provide the necessary output to construct the floating solar plant, CleanTechnica reported last week.