French company Ciel et Terre has developed a floating collection of solar panels in order to address concerns of solar farms taking up too much land.
The floating solar farm is made up of 800 photovoltaic panels, and it's the first of its kind to be installed in the U.K., according to Discovery News. The panels were installed on a reservoir at Sheeplands Farm in Berkshire, close to Wargrave.
Ciel et Terre believes the project can collect energy from the sun while it floats on reservoirs, irrigation canals, quarry lakes and remediation ponds, giving these waterways another purpose and reducing evaporation at the same time.
Mark Bennett, the farmer who owns the land where the project has been installed, will have to pay $405,000 for the solar panels. However, making $32,000 a year for the generated power, along with saving almost $40,000 a year on electricity he would normally use to buy to give his farm power, will allow him to make it up in six years, Discovery News reported.
The solar farm has a capacity of 200W, as well as a life expectancy of 30 years.
Bennett is looking to use the new farm to show more people in the U.K. the benefits of the technology, Phys.org reported.
"We are a fourth-generation farm so we have had to diversify, because it's hard ... This green energy [provides] another revenue stream," he said.
"We are speaking to big utility companies, to agricultural companies- anyone with an unused body of water. The potential is remarkable."
The U.K. is the latest country to receive a floating solar farm, as France and India have already installed similar projects, Discovery News reported. Japan plans to install the biggest solar farm in the world, which will have an output of 1.7MW.
