Mobile floating PV installation powers the Paris Olympic village – SPE

By pv magazine France

It is the largest floating and mobile solar power plant in the world. The temporary photovoltaic installation, leased especially for the Olympic Games by energy company EDF ENR to a subsidiary, is moored on the banks of the Seine and helps to supply green energy to the Olympic and Paralympic Square, the central and festive location of the Athletes’ Village. where athletes and journalists come together. There are also shops and giant screens projecting live images of the match.

The temporary solar power plant operates on purely self-consumption and does not supply electricity to the grid, which requires real-time adjustment of electricity production to the site’s consumption. Spread over 470 square meters and with a capacity of 78 kWp – the consumption of 94 apartments in the Village – the main advantage of the installation is that it can be set up and taken down very easily.

Innovative process

To unfold it on the pontoon, all you have to do is open the doors of the shipping container in which it is located, pull the solar wings, which are already wired, connect them together and insert the whole thing into the container – where the inverter is located. , security systems and all electrical components have been installed – to have an operational solar power plant within 24 hours.

“This is the first time in the world that we are sailing with a photovoltaic power plant. Even if it was only 900 meters, the distance between where the installation is unloaded and where it is assembled, says Franck Chauveau, director of major project development for EDF in Île-de-France. pv magazine France.

In addition to performance, this type of PV structure, innovative in its process, is an economical alternative to using generators to supply electricity to events such as the Olympic Games, fairs or festivals, or even to isolated locations inaccessible to the public network . The Voies Navigables de France (VNF), the French shipping authority responsible for managing the majority of the country’s inland waterways, is the first to take an interest in this, in particular by carrying out construction sites along the banks of rivers.