Click here and select
Renewable Assets.
Then use the search
bar to drill down to
assets with “fish farm”
in their name.Add a filter for
facilities that include
the words “fish farm”
in their name.Click on a dot for
more information on
a particular plant,
such as this 100MW
facility near Cixi, one
of China’s largest.Total operational
capacity was 12GW as
of July.Fig. 2 Run {BNEF <GO>} and click on the BNEF website link. (You may need to
get permission for this function.)Fig. 1 To map fish farm power plants, go to {MAPS <GO>}. Click on Datasets, search for “power,”
and select pwr_plants Global Power Plants in the results. Click on the Open In Map button.Batty is a Functions for the Market editor at Bloomberg in London.To see more details about these projects, type “bnef” into
the command line and hit
option. (You may need special permission for this.) Hover over
Companies & Assets at the top of the page and choose Renewable
Assets. Type “fish farm” (including the quotation marks) into
the search bar and click on the Search button. Then choose the
Advanced Filters button in the top right, tick Commissioned in
the status section, and hit Apply Filters.
The List View tab shows individual plants. As of July 26, it
included 365 facilities, ranging from 200MW down to 1MW. Their
total capacity was 12GW.
China is not the only place where these types of projects
have been built—there are similar developments in the Netherlands,
Norway, and Taiwan—but there are far more solar fish farms in
China than in any other country. Beijing’s promotion of new solar
technologies through a subsidy called Top Runner may be part of
the reason for the large number of projects, says Jenny Chase,
head of solar analysis at BNEF. “This application of solar technol-
ogy to fish farming is a relatively new phenomenon, and there is
still work to be done in figuring out how best to combine the two
disciplines,” she adds. “How much shade is optimal to grow
different species of fish in different climates, for example?”
The continuing drop in the cost of photovoltaic panels, a
need for clean power near major centers of demand, and innova-
tive ideas will ensure fish farms aren’t the last unconventional
iteration of solar power.30