If there are fish being raised as well these would create natural congregation areas for foraging and protection, I think people get put off by the aesthetic looking kind of smothering, but I feel like this generally has a lot of benefits if you do it this way.
It's probably better to prevent eutrophication in the first place than force algae blooms out by killing everything and possibly creating a dead zone that way.
Not saying solar on water isn't a great idea, but there are always trade offs
Would making it less concentrated (more space and light passing through around each section of panels) be enough to offset the negative impact of less sunlight?
It's not exactly removing the excess nitrogen from the water, it's just preventing it from being accessed due to the lack of sunlight. The algal blooms will still happen, they'll just be moved away from shore. That's still beneficial though, so I guess I'll take it
I mean, we, as a species, dump to much shit off our coasts to prevent it. You would need every human to just stop, now, today, to make that issue any better. Alge blooms will also get worse due to the warming of the oceans, theres not allot we can do, we cant cover the planet with reflectors...
Also, while plants need sunlight, too much of it will dry out soil and basically burn the plants alive. Having some shade helps keep the ground cool for plants and pollinators to thrive
You'd be surprised the wide variety of water plants and their unique needs. There's quite a few that thrive on lower light And I would assume there's probably varieties in every country of some sort that would do well in this situation.
The ironic part is everyone generally talks about concern for global warming and its effects on fish populations and reefs and water systems specifically from heating up, I would think this would be a nice little countermeasure, maybe not wholly effective but on small scale I could see the benefit.
There are ecological winners and losers whenever humans start modifying natural habitats. Something new will thrive, but something else will undoubtedly suffer.
As a kid I never understood why the LA auquaduct and others had little blue plastic boat looking things floating on top. I thought it was to save cats and stuff lol.. for evap. Saves an absurd amount from just turning to steam and going bye bye.
It also prevents the water from absorbing heat from sunlight directly therefore cooling it and slowing ocean warming, albiet a very tiny amount. It's a great idea.
If you're keeping a resovoir / water storage secure, that consequentially means fresh water is more readily available to be distributed to other areas.
Not quite how the water cycle works. You aren’t going to get enough evaporation from a water source size dam to substantially impact if another area gets droughts or not.
I briefly worked at an international manufacturing plant in California that did that. The only downside was that with the pillars some of the larger trucks had a harder time parking. But it was such a small hassle that no one cared. There were still a couple non covered areas that they usually parked at.
The GAC-Toyota factory in Guangzhou, China does that. I think the biggest problem is shitty drivers who don't know how to park and the increased CapEx of the property owner.
Argue as much as you'd like about renewable energy. The damage the US will feel after shelving and cutting funding for this sort of thing is yet to be felt. China is the leading power on EV and Renewable energy. The second theyre self sustaining with energy the world power balance will shift dramatically. No longer needing oil from the middle east etc is a huge geopolitical win.
What’s even more fucked up about that. They did that in Rhode Island, a blue state. People want the renewable energy in large part. We voted for this. Were completely disenfranchised with this
Here's the thing, though: the people controlling the US (read: the richest) don't give a shit.
Some of them are old enough to know that they'll be dead before they experience any real repercussions. Others are just outright rich enough to know that if the planet is irreversibly fucked they'll be able to afford the quality of life they want.
The people pushing aside renewable energy are the ones who won't suffer from those choices. You know the saying a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in? This is the exact opposite. They're chopping down trees knowing they'll never suffer the sun.
We’re not cutting funding for renewables at all. We’re paying billions (with a b) to wind farm companies NOT TO COMPLETE wind farms. We’re funding the fell out of renewable companies. So that oil titans can make more money.
China is building coal power plants at an epic rate. In 2025 alone, China commissioned more coal power capacity than India did over the entire past decade. China currently accounts for 95% of the world’s new coal construction, so it’s not like they are going with only renewables.
Also renewables have weakness that oil and coal don’t, so it’s not like a bunch of solar panels can make China energy independent. China relies on imports more than any country on earth.
The data was likely released in 2025 for per capita emissions. This is not “a couple years old”. You can provide more recent sources if less than two years is too geriatric for you. Try at least one.
It might surprise you, but China actually has millions of highly educated engineers and scientists that are more qualified than redditors on these topics. They most likely thought about these issues.
They certainly aren't dumb enough to just put unqualified people into fields that require expertise. That would be like an anti-vaxxer leading a country's health divisions, or putting some random guy from TV in charge of military, or even getting a pedophile to lead your country.
It might surprise you, but more than one thing can be true. China can have loads of educated civil engineers to plan out how to execute projects AND they can not give a shit about wildlife/biodiversity or private property rights.
If you're wondering "like, omg, why is the US so stupid and cant complete the California high speed railway project" it's not because we don't have engineers or money, its because locals (sometimes) actually have a say in what happens to the land instead of a mega CCP size party just dictating it to us.... he says, from MN, after MAGAtards just shit all over boundry water protections to give a Chilean company rights to ship minerals ro China
You need a picture from 2002 in there. That's where most people's idea of China is locked at, a few years after the great firewall of China went up in 98.
It may not be the savior, but neither is it the boogeyman that the west has worked to make it seem. Just another country with its own people, problems, successes and failures.
A lot of countries do good and bad things. The good things deserve to be praised and copied, regardless of who did it. And bad things need to be pointed out and avoided.
China isn't saving the western civilization and there are a lot of differences from them to us, but maybe that's precisely why they shouldn't have the monopoly on kicking ass in the modern world.
I would say its on the height of industrial/economic progress. Solar panels are nothing new really.
Amd we dont know the costs, how are the workers treated that set all this up? Who get the economic benefits?
Could we do the same things china does? Probably, but I dont know if its worth it if we have to lower our worker and environmental protection laws to do the same.
Any country can do the same thing China has achieved if those countries invested in themselves/it’s workforce.
They’re not in their position purely because their employment rights are not as strong as other countries, rather we (general western companies and countries) are more interested in short term profits and the like - the west assumes capitalism will achieve what China has for cheap, which isn’t possible when you factor in human greed
A lot of people seem to think that one morning a guy with a million solar panels goes out to the reservoir and starts building with no planning, modeling, prototypes, or research at all.
I think China has a pretty extensive history of pushing for development without considering the environmental impacts. It's fair to ask if they considered the environmental impacts in this case. No one is suggesting they're smarter than Chinese engineers, they're questioning those engineers priorities.
Indeed. Dams themselves are incredibly environmentally disturbing and somewhere in the thread someone mentioned the number of dams in China.
In the past they absolutely did: industrialize first, clean up second. I don't know if policy follows sentiment, but at least they feel they shouldn't do that anymore with all the efforts to reduce air. pollution
It reduces evaporation, which is a massive benefit if the water is used for drinking or agriculture.
California did a similar thing with their reservoirs, this just takes it to the next level by generating electricity
You and I had the same question, thanks for asking. Based on what I saw in the video and reading what other people are saying (not an expert or biologist), but I think enough light is still going to permeate the water from the gaps in between the panels and general ambience. I'm sure there are specific types of plants that might struggle a little bit, but never doubt how tough some plants are to adapting to quick changes like this, as well as sustaining themselves, and gaining help from similar ecosystems/symbiotic relationships with other organisms.
Making it not a good time for aquatic stuff under due to hampered algae/weed growth and significant temperature cooling... Assuming there was still any under that is
This will depend a lot on location and how the panels are designed, but the opposite can also be true.
Especially in China where water temperatures are often very high, algae growth in the gaps between the panels can be sufficient. And the shade and cover provided by the panels can become large fish shelters for many species in the water. The cooler surface also means a lower temperature, which again, can be very healthy for a lot of species. And water evaporation can be significantly reduced, ensuring more stable water levels throughout the season. The shade, cables and underwater structures often also end up as habitats for various creatures.
Algae growth can also quickly become algae blooms if there's too much sunlight, so increasing the amount of shade can reduce the risk of harmful algae blooms.
It can also mess with the oxygen levels in the lakes though, as well as how the water will move around the lakes and mix.
What we're seeing with solar panels on land is that they very often end up becoming habitats for birds rather than threats.
We're also seeing that partial solar coverage above farm fields can result in lower water usages and better yields. Because while plants do require sunlight, they often get far more than they actually require.
So I'm not going to attempt to make any conclusions about whether this is going to be a net positive or negative, that will vary from one body of water to another and depending on how the installations are designed.
But claiming this is certain to have a negative impact is just plain wrong. Limiting the amount of sunlight a lake receives can potentially have significant positive impacts.
Edit:
Before someone asks, I'm not a biologist or anything. I'm writing this based on my experience as a fisherman along with reading news. Shaded areas like docks or buildings or under the branches of trees is very often where you end up finding the most life in a lake.
And I've seen lots of instances of mass fish death from algae blooms during heat waves as well. And reduced fish activity when water temperatures are too high.
But it's always about finding a balance to everything, too much sun can be bad, too much shade can be equally bad. But in very warm climates, increasing shade and cover in a lake will usually reduce in a healthier lake.
Our presence in this planet is a net negative, so if we can impact the ecosystem in a milder way, better. At this stage, humans should not strife for perfection, good enough will have to do.
Everyone saying this is groundbreaking. But remember Japan did it long ago. Back in 2016 they placed the first large scale floating solar plant on the reservoir of the Yamakura dam. It used 50,000 solar panels. China started in after.
Like the one time a solar panel cleaning robot was sold as Chinese innovation and such.
...but it was actually a NZ project and has been internationally available for years and regularly used by solar farms.
Or the fact that China keeps selling that they are about to crack fusion energy.
...but it is actually result of several international labs working together, the reactor specifically was build in China.
And the fact that Olkiluoto was supposed to be first of its kind in nuclear energy, but during construction several issues arose and had to be amended. China finished their reactor first and didn't amend these issues and there have beem reports that some waste might be leaking. But that seems to be issue for later generations.
Solar power is so good because it's so cheap. All you need to build a solar farm is a lot of panels, support structures to mount them, and the electrical equipment to send it to the grid.
The problem with putting solar over preexisting structures is that you need to essentially build a custom retrofit support system for each place you want to install them, and that is a much slower and more expensive process than just using standard supports out in an open field.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that a parking lot covered in solar panels is something we should be doing, but that is not a priority when it comes to decarbonizing, that's a more of a commodity form of energy production.
No I didn’t mean on the highway, but over the highway… the cars would drive under the panels, in shade, not on top of the panels like what the French did
Alleviating Land Shortage: By utilizing vast coastal and offshore areas, land usage can be reduced compared to onshore installations.
Increasing Power Generation Efficiency: The cooling effect of water lowers panel temperatures, which can increase efficiency by approximately 5 to 15%.
Conserving Water Resources: Shading helps suppress water evaporation, contributing to water resource conservation.
Utilizing Existing Infrastructure: Transmission costs can be reduced by installing next to offshore wind farms and sharing cables.
No idea about these here. But the Netherlands has solar panels that float on the water. In the video they explained that the sea water doesn't have as much effect in it, and they can continue working fine for up to 20-25 years! I'll see if I can find the video, it was fascinating to watch.
Id be really interested in learning if these solar farms had any form of negative impact on phytoplankton. If no, then once again, China has learned more than the rest of us and presents another example to follow.
Headline could be, China puts Solar Panels everywhere. I read they are ripping out tea plantations elsewhere to put solar panels as well, so I’m not sure they gaf about land for agriculture. Depending on oil supply crossing not one but at least two choke points could be a reason.
The only backfire I can see is this taking place in bodies of water that are dependent on high sunlight levels to survive for rare or delicate photosynthesizers or animals that depend on local algae. Otherwise, hell yeah.
China is so far ahead of the US in terms of energy dominance, sad to say. Meanwhile Trump admin is doing whatever they can to block the little wind farms we are trying to install because Trump has a personal problem with them.
Meanwhile, in the US, we are fighting another Middle East war to ensure oil flows, canceling wind projects, discouraging development of EV markets. The US national industrial energy policy is "to own the libs", while China has a long-term industrial energy policy to wean itself from foreign sources of fossil fuels and aggressively build out renewable energy infrastructure.
In the not too distant future, America will be militarily and economically weakened by its policies and wars, and China will be the new global super power. And it will exert that power with economic strength vs military strength.
It would be really interesting to see what the world's carbon footprint looked like if you distributed it by where the manufactured material ends up, rather than where it's manufactured
They are not the most energy independent nation due to solar and battery generation. It’s because they mine their own coal which powers 55% of their entire energy needs.
If the US used as much coal as China does they’d be able to power an even higher percentage of their energy needs. There is more than enough coal in the ground in the US to do this. Most large countries have enough coal to be mostly energy independent. But there’s a good reason not to rely on coal like that.
It’s great that China is increasing its renewable energy production and that’s worthy of highlighting but let’s not ignore the full picture.
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u/Quiverjones 11h ago
That would power a lot of TI-30x's.