Dutch-Norwegian floating solar farm developer SolarDuck said, it would build the world´s largest hybrid offshore floating solar power plant at the offshore wind farm Hollandse Kust West VII in the Netherlands, following the winning bid of RWE´s subsidiary Oranje Wind Power II.
SolarDuck will build a 5MW demonstrator with integrated energy storage solutions. Following the collaboration agreement signed between SolarDuck and RWE in July this year, SolarDuck was selected as the exclusive provider for offshore floating solar (´OFS´) technology with integrated energy storage in RWE´s bid for the offshore wind farm HKW VII.
SolarDuck´s CEO Koen Burgers said: “This is a flagship project for SolarDuck and an important milestone for the wider OFS industry. SolarDuck, being the first to build a hybrid project at this scale, will demonstrate the robustness of our solution, prove the important role of system integration in building future-fit energy systems, and enable the scaling of the technology to accelerate its adoption. We are proud to work together with our partner, RWE, in this important project.”
SolarDuck said that delivering this project would enable it to scale faster, reap the associated cost benefits and ultimately accelerate commercial projects at grid scale.
“Hybrid offshore wind and OFS projects promise to accelerate the adoption of OFS at scale. The complementarities between wind and solar resources as well as making better use of existing infrastructure and the ocean space will drive the growth of hybrid OFS projects. In this way, SolarDuck can have a deeper impact in decarbonizing the world, particularly in sunny regions of the world where land is scarce,” SolarDuck said.