Boost

The offshore demonstrator system under the BOOST project in La Palma, Spain completed December 2023. The demonstrator was Europe’s largest ocean-based floating solar energy system and aligns with the EU’s commitment to remove barriers in implementing renewable energies, in accordance with its Solar Energy Strategy and the incentives for self-consumption installations. The demonstrator utilizes Ocean Sun’s patented floating solar photovoltaics (FPV) technology and marks the final milestone in a comprehensive three-year-long R&D project focused on demonstrating and validating a solution for seawater floating PV. During the project Ocean Sun’s technology has been analysed by independent engineering firm Innosea and tested at the SINTEF Ocean basin laboratory. Furthermore, the project has obtained a site-specific design verification from DNV according to the Ocean Sun’s design premise, confirming the designs suitability for deployment. Being an R&D project, we achieved the main objective of the project by deploying a real-life pilot, enabling us to study performance and calibrate our virtual models. Based on the learnings we have improved the design and plan to upgrade the system in Tazacorte and have it operational once again.