Albania’s first floating solar plant, unveiled and connected to the grid at the start of June this year, has sunk.
Built by two Norwegian companies, Statkraft and the Ocean Sun, the 2-megawat solar plant was launched on the Banja reservoir, where Stakraft also operates a 72-megawatt hydropower plant.
The solar plant covered 4,000 square meters and comprised of 4 floating units and some 1,600 solar panels.
According to Ocean Sun, there was an incident with the ‘floater’—the large floating ring attached to a membrane. This, in turn, is attached to barges which help to keep it afloat. The company reported “severe damage” resulting in its partial submersion.
“Salvaging the assets including solar panels is ongoing. The company is working closely with Statkraft to determine the reasons and the consequences of the incident,” Ocean Sun said shortly after the sinking.
Yesterday, they gave another statement saying that work was underway to transfer the damaged assets ashore and work was underway to understand what went wrong.
“Ocean Sun remains fully committed to and confident in the core technology, which has been successfully proven in several pilots. Ocean Sun will update the financial market as the process moves forward and further information becomes available,” the company stated.
Before the incident, both companies said that three more floating units would be installed in the second half of 2021 for a total additional capacity of 1.5 MWp. They didn’t comment on whether these plans are still in effect.
