Responsibly developing offshore solar relies on growing our understanding of the potential impacts of offshore solar development on marine resources, and the effectiveness of mitigation technologies. To achieve this, we incorporate environmental monitoring into every project we undertake. Our marine ecologists and field scientists diligently collect data from our pilot projects, including water quality parameters like light, temperature, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll and turbidity levels. Additionally, we utilize both above-water and underwater camera images to gather essential information about how our systems function and interact with fish, birds and marine mammals. During the more than four years of field observations around our pilots, we have not seen any negative impact of our systems with sea life.

The field data we collect is crucial for validating our models that predict the effects of large-scale offshore solar installations on various ecosystems. For example, we collaborated with research partners to develop an initial water column model simulating a temperate coastal sea environment, such as the North Sea, to assess the shadow effect on phytoplankton. Our results indicate that there is no significant impact on primary production, even when considering unrealistically large floating farms extending tens of kilometers. This is primarily because the tides continuously move seawater beneath the floating installations, preventing phytoplankton particles from remaining in the shadow zone for extended periods. That’s on top of the fact that floating solar farms take up little sea space compared to the overall size and water volume of sea basins.