What If We Covered The Ocean With Solar Panels? | Unveiled

What If We Covered the Ocean with Solar Panels?

With the planet’s future at stake, switching to renewable energy has never been more important, and solar power is usually put forward as one of the best options. So far, plans for solar farms have mostly taken shape across sprawling expanses of open land. But the majority of Earth’s surface area is actually covered by water, so what happens if we turn our attention instead toward the sea?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if we covered the ocean with solar panels?

Solar energy is much more powerful and versatile than its given credit for. Since its commercial introduction in the 1950s, the quality of solar panels has only gotten better… while the cost to build and install them has drastically reduced over the last few decades and is continuing to fall. Looking into the future, solar energy is set to get even more efficient and cost-effective as it bids to become Earth’s leading energy type. Soon we could see every new-build house fitted with solar panels as standard; we could be driving solar-powered cars with panels on their rooftops; and even our devices could find themselves fuelled by the sun thanks to the advent of solar phone cases. Admittedly, the tech does seem to work best in sunnier locations, but solar devices are increasingly built to adapt to overcast conditions as well, as manufacturers look to sidestep changes in the environment to achieve a steady and reliable energy source.

The oceans cover more than 70% of the planet’s surface, meaning that equipping the entire ocean with solar panels would be like covering Earth’s entire landmass more than twice over. Imagine what the world would look and be like if every square-foot of land was in some way solar panelled… now double that mental image, and that’s what we’re talking about!

In terms of sheer energy output, it’d be so vast it’s almost impossible to quantify. Using even moderate solar panels by today’s standards, we wouldn’t have to worry about power shortages for hundreds or maybe even thousands of years. The move would completely eliminate the need for fossil fuels and other renewables… With specialists working round-the-clock, day-by-day to update and improve the performance of our solar seas. We’d be taking a clean, reliable, affordable energy solution and maximising it to produce enough power and electricity for everyone in every corner of the world. And yet, the plan comes with plenty of downsides. So many downsides, in fact, that actually achieving it would be almost completely impossible and totally irresponsible.

First of all, though they’re designed to process sunlight, the endless sheet of panels would block out all of the sunlight that ordinarily gets into the ocean, causing havoc for ocean life. In the seas as they are, sunlight is vital even all the way down to the point where it can no longer reach, helping coral to grow and ensuring that creatures survive. The sun’s rays also serve to heat up the ocean, so cover it with solar panels and we’d also drastically cool tropical waters, destroying delicate ecosystems.

But it’d be more than just a lack of the sun’s power that’d cause problems. Large, ocean-dwelling mammals, like whales or dolphins, need to reach the surface to breathe – but they’d now be trapped by a barrier of manmade tech. From the outside looking in, fish-eating seabirds wouldn’t be able to get to their food anymore… Perhaps we’d see certain species set up a new home on the panels themselves, but even allowing for a degree of adaptation, the conversion to solar seas could easily trigger the extinction of thousands of species.

Despite the almost limitless power it’d generate for us, it wouldn’t be great for humans, either - mostly because we wouldn’t be able to use boats anymore. We wouldn’t be able to fish (or at least our fishing methods would be severely limited); we wouldn’t have container ships for industry or cruise ships for tourism; and even eco-friendly sailing boats would quickly be a thing of the past. For international trade and travel, we’d find ourselves either having to rely on car-like vehicles that travel across the panels, or on air-travel (which may or may not be solar-powered).

The good news is that, back in the here and now, the scientists working on solar tech are doing so with sustainability and conservation in mind – after all, the main drive for developing solar panels in the first place is to build a greener future. The other good news is that, if we ever did want to build solar farms at sea, we wouldn’t need to cover the whole ocean to get enough energy - not even close. The energy specialist, Mehran Moalem, has already boldly claimed that covering just 1% of the Sahara Desert – about 43,000 square miles – with solar panels could generate enough power to meet the current, global energy usage per year, which is more than 17 Terawatts. 43,000 square miles is an even tinier fraction of the total area served by our oceans, though, which in some places can gain just as much sunlight as the desert does.

In fact, heading for the water might actually be a better option than targeting something like the Sahara at all. A 43,000-square-mile solar farm in the desert effectively sacrifices that entire portion of land and habitat - leaving it uninhabitable for any creature that previously called it home. However, were we to take the same number of solar panels and widely spread them in smaller clusters across the sea, then the localised impact could be reduced. Sure, it’d take a massive global effort to manage the logistics of it, and there would still be justifiable environmental concerns, but we’d needn’t simply “write off” anywhere chosen to host solar panels.

So, smaller farms dotted across the world might be the answer. But is it even possible to build panels fit for the ocean? Traditionally, they’re large, heavy, and easy to break… so is water really the best place for them?

Well… Floating solar, or FPV (Floating Photovoltaic), is a very real venture. The first patents for FPV tech were filed as recently as 2008, but it’s developed a lot since then… And there already are various examples where large bodies of water, like artificial lakes and reservoirs, have been fitted with FPV. The conditions for these pre-existing projects are usually gentler, more manageable and much more predictable than they would be on the wide-open ocean - but advocates say successful reservoir set-ups prove the potential. Throw in the financial viability, reduced safety risks and the fact that, should they require it, solar panels are decommissioned simply by switching them off and removing them from the water - and FPV becomes more and more appealing.

The biggest barrier for widespread FPV panels, though, is the ocean itself. They so far haven’t been thoroughly tested against strong tides or currents, which could first prove destructive and costly and second turn broken, dislodged panels into extra, unwanted, man-made sea pollutants. Structures known as Heliofloats are being developed to combat the problem, though. With the first prototypes being developed in Austria, they’re large, 300ft slabs of photovoltaic cells that are capable of taking on and reacting to the water - which allows the panels they support to rise and fall in time with the sea. Because of the way they’re designed, even in a worst-case scenario and a Heliofloat sinks, it’d cause minimal damage and be easy to recover. For better or worse, it wouldn’t inflict any permanent effects on the landscape.

Of course, there are other exciting solar power developments going on, too. The Race for Water Foundation, for example, tours the globe raising awareness of sustainable energy practice, via a large boat that’s completely powered by renewables; mostly solar. There are also plans to make solar windows a mainstay in urban and rural areas, as soon as we can develop solar screens transparent enough to see through. Meanwhile, we could even one day build whole roads out of solar panels, although early attempts haven’t proven successful so far.

Sea-based solar farms seem a shoo-in for our future, though - turning Earth’s vast expanses of water into viable, renewable energy centres. While covering the entire ocean would definitely be detrimental to life on Earth, it would never be necessary. According to more optimistic plans, we can harvest more than enough of the sun’s energy by tactically installing floating panels in multiple locations, with minimal upheaval to local ecosystems or the wider environment. And that’s what would happen if we covered the ocean with solar panels.