LOOK CLOSELY AT CHINA’S solar power market and you might come
across something a little, well, fishy.
Fish farm solar plants represent almost 9% of the 135.7 giga-
watts of sun-power capacity installed across the country, accord-
ing to BloombergNEF’s database. And, no, these aren’t pools of cod
with photovoltaic fins. A large number of these are banks of floating
or fixed solar panels positioned over water where fish are farmed.
Land constraints are the main driver for this growing market.
China may not be short of land overall, but near cities, which require
the most electricity, there is a shortage of suitable space for solar
installations. A solar plant needs roughly 2 hectares (5 acres) of land
to generate a megawatt of power, so generating substantial power
requires a lot of space. And China is the world’s biggest farmer of
fish, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations, with a lot of facilities located close to major cities.
To see where these fish farm power plants are, type “maps”
in the command line of a Bloomberg terminal screen and hit
Click on Datasets and type “power” into the amber box. Tick the
box next to pwr_plants Global Power Plants near the bottom of
the search results and click the Open in Map button.
This will load all power plants globally. To drill down to fish
farm plants, first click Clear Selection to the right of Status and
then tick only the Operational box. Then click +Add Filter below
the amber box at the bottom of the sidebar screen. Choose Name
from the drop-down and type “fish farm” in the amber box that
appears. Click the Apply button. Next, make sure to change the
drop-down next to the filter to Contains, to capture all plants that
contain “Fish Farm” in their name.
Once the map loads, zoom in on China, where almost all such
plants tracked by Bloomberg are located. Zoom further to just
south of Shanghai and click on the plant near Cixi in Zhejiang prov-
ince. The 100MW Cixi Fengling New Energy Ningbo Cixi Fish Farm
PV Plant I is one of the nation’s largest.
In addition to saving space, there are other benefits to com-
bining solar plants with fish farms. “Due to environmental concerns
and cost pressure, fish farmers are naturally looking at alternatives”
to traditional energy sources, says Céline Paton, a senior financial
analyst at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore. “An
obvious one is to look at distributed solar PV systems”—combined
with batteries.
Fish farms require energy and often have to use polluting
diesel generators to cope with their power demands. Solar panels
can provide the power without any emissions, while also giving
shade to the pool of water underneath, improving the environment
for successful fish rearing. Another benefit is that solar panels
positioned over water can be as much as 10% more efficient than
ground-based panels because the water helps keep them cool,
according to BNEF calculations.The project, developed by GCL New Energy Holdings and with a capacity of 100MW in its first phase, is located in a lake near the Hunan province city.
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