FOUNDER(S): JAMES TAYLOR & SEBASTIAAN SCHALKWIJK

THE COMPANY

SolarSub arose from a shared desire between Sebastiaan and James to do their part in solving the climate crisis. We met during our first year at the university of Edinburgh over five years ago and have maintained this friendship since. The company began with research conducted by Sebastiaan for his master’s dissertation on the issues of floating solar. His work presented an innovative way to maximise the efficiency of floating solar by tackling heat build-up and overheating.

After seeing the potential of this idea, a prototype was created and was tested at the Flo Wave facility at the University of Edinburgh. It proved the concept Sebastiaan had been working on for over a year. Sitting there watching the data roll in was when we knew we had something special. From there we decided to bring this idea to life through SolarSub.

 For us, SolarSub is our way of contributing to the future of renewable energy. We want to focus on improving green technology and making solar energy more accessible and efficient. By increasing the efficiency of solar panels, we hope to play a small but important role in addressing the climate crisis and moving toward a sustainable future.

THE PROBLEM

Overheating is a widespread issue for the floating solar sector. Panels can reach temperatures of up to 80°C, leading to a 25% drop in energy efficiency. Essentially, the hotter a panel gets, the less power it produces. If left unsolved, overheating has the potential to reduce the actual revenue of the floating solar operator by up to 25%.

Beyond efficiency, high temperatures also reduce panel lifespan. Today, most solar panels last 25-30 years, but proper cooling could extend that to 48 years, improving return on investment and sustainability.

Delving further into the problem, floating solar energy is up to 30% more expensive than land-based solar. If the issue of overheating can be addressed and efficiency improved, then the megawatt-to-dollar cost ratio can be brought further in line with the cost ratio of land-based solar.

THE SOLUTION

Our system extracts the excess heat from the solar panel and dissipates it into the surrounding waterbody. The entire process is completely passive. Ultimately, the passive nature of our cooling system enables efficiency increases of up to 20% and prevents heat build-up within the panels to increase lifespan to ~40 years. Currently, we are at TRL 5.

By increasing the efficiency and lifespan of a solar panel, a SolarSub cooling system can increase the CO2 savings of a solar panel by 21600kg over its lifetime.

SolarSub intends to disrupt the conventional ‘buy more panels to produce more energy’ approach; instead, we increase the concentration of energy production. In doing so we can maximise the energy output of a floating solar farm by up to 20%, allowing us to increase the rate of return on the operator’s investment. While increasing lifespan allows us to increase the overall return on investment.

TOP TIPS

Embrace failure and adapt quickly.

ALMUNI : University of Edinburgh