Tell your state leaders to support novel solar array designs!

Vertical solar and floating solar are two of the many new solar array designs adapting to different geographies worldwide. Now, the world’s first vertical floating solar array has been built on a gravel pit lake in Bavaria, Germany. It’s 1.87 MW, enough to power hundreds of households, and a second phase is on the way. The verticality means it produces more power in the morning and evening, nicely complementing other solar farms. Waterbirds have already been spotted nesting on the floats. The new array’s manufacturer, SINN Power, reports that the model is suitable for waterbodies deeper than 5.2 feet and meets all technical requirements for operating offshore in the ocean.

This is just one of many fast-multiplying examples of novel solar array designs from around the world! Humanity is now mass-producing solar panels, and they’re freaking amazing: a zero-emissions, zero-moving parts power-generating sheet of glass that provides clean electricity when you point it at the Sun. We’re learning that you can put up solar arrays almost anywhere, in a wide range of configurations, and they provide cheap power — and often additional side benefits as well, especially in the field of “providing shade and a respite from heat to the stuff underneath them.”

We can co-locate solar farms and sheep grazing, a practice already spreading rapidly in Texas.

We can put shade-giving and power-generating solar canopies over parking lots or bike lanes, as is becoming a new norm in France.

We can put solar canopies over irrigation canals to save water by reducing evaporation, as pilot projects in California and Arizona are already doing.

We can even use solar arrays to help protect wild animals and ecosystems! Studies in the UK and Germany have found that rare birds are breeding on solar farms planted with wildflower seeds (an example of “ecovoltaics”), and a recent study from Colorado found that solar arrays help wild grasslands weather drought years by retaining more soil moisture.

State leaders should actively encourage and incentivize all forms of solar deployment, from floating solar to agrivoltaics to ecovoltaics to solar canopies to rooftop solar to solar grazing to ordinary tried-and-true grid-scale solar farms. Policymakers can accelerate these epic win-wins by ensuring fast-acting and supportive legal, regulatory, and permitting structures!

Tell your state leaders to support novel solar array designs!