Difficulties abound: Many difficulties and obstacles need to be overcome Although the prospects of offshore photovoltaics are promising, it faces all-round challenges, including cost technology, environment, policy and many other problems that need to be overcome. High temperature, high humidity, high salt spray at sea, soft tidal flat soil, and long-term impact by wind, waves, tides, etc., place high requirements on the anti-corrosion and safety construction of photovoltaic power plants.   Taking the current mainstream technology route—pile-based fixed photovoltaic power stations as an example—in the northern seas, ice may hit the component array.   Floating photovoltaic power plants also face challenges from the sea. Tan Qitite, president of Jinko Technology Design and Research Institute, once wrote in an article that “the wind waves and wind speeds faced by offshore floating systems are much greater than those of inland lakes, and the superimposed tide level has a greater impact, so offshore floating systems are more inclined to comprehensive marine engineering. "   From a technical point of view, Sun Yunlin told reporters that the construction of offshore photovoltaic power stations requires the completion of "seven prevention" designs such as typhoon prevention, tide prevention, wave prevention, ice floating prevention, corrosion prevention, erosion prevention, and biological adhesion prevention. The complexity and difficulty are All are larger.   It is understood that the large-scale development of offshore photovoltaics is still in its infancy globally. Not only key technologies such as wave resistance, sea ice resistance, cold wave resistance, and salt spray resistance are in urgent need of breakthroughs, but also engineering design, construction, post-operation and maintenance, etc. There is also a lack of industry standards in this link. Both the early construction and development and the later operation and maintenance of offshore photovoltaics are much more difficult to promote than onshore photovoltaic power stations.   A series of difficulties have raised the construction costs of offshore photovoltaic power stations. A design institute in the industry found through a comparison of investments in conventional ground power stations and offshore power stations that, assuming the same type of modules are installed, the cost per watt of offshore photovoltaic module installation, bracket installation and pile foundation are respectively about 0.05 yuan and 0.05 yuan higher than those of ground power stations. 0.636 yuan and 0.679 yuan, the comprehensive additional cost is more than 1.365 yuan/watt higher.   According to calculations by the International Renewable Energy Agency, the construction cost of offshore photovoltaic power stations is about 5%-12% higher than that of onshore photovoltaic power stations. Among them, the cost of floating photovoltaic power stations is higher. Industry insiders have revealed that the raw material cost of floating photovoltaic power stations is 10%-30% higher than that of conventional photovoltaics.   Even the experimental investment in offshore photovoltaic power stations is expensive. Take the country's first offshore floating photovoltaic power station - Hainan Wanning offshore floating photovoltaic power station demonstration project as an example. This rectangular photovoltaic array project with a width of 30 meters and a length of 50 meters has only been in operation for more than ten days because it is a pilot project. , it was dismantled in accordance with relevant regulations. According to Zhang Xiaoming, the project leader and executive director and general manager of Zhongneng Zhongcheng New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., "a total of more than 4 million yuan was spent."   Sun Yunlin also said that from the perspective of the entire industry, unit investment cost is currently the biggest obstacle restricting the development of offshore photovoltaics. At this stage, the return rate of simple floating photovoltaic projects on the sea generally cannot meet the return rate requirements of investment companies.   Faced with these difficulties, the good news is that some local governments are gradually introducing encouraging and supporting policies. Taking Shandong Province as an example, it is clearly proposed that for floating offshore photovoltaic projects completed and connected to the grid between 2022 and 2025, the provincial finance will provide subsidies at the standards of 1,000 yuan, 800 yuan, 600 yuan, and 400 yuan per kilowatt respectively, and the subsidy scale shall not exceed 100,000 kilowatts, 200,000 kilowatts, 300,000 kilowatts, and 400,000 kilowatts.   On the corporate side, we are also promoting technology research and development and launching new products and achievements based on the characteristics of the marine environment. For example, Tongwei's TNC technology double-glass modules have obtained offshore photovoltaic certification from TV Nord Group; Trina Solar's Supreme series modules have obtained TV Rheinland offshore photovoltaic certification. This shows that my country’s offshore photovoltaic module products have been able to cope with the severe challenges from the marine environment.   In response to offshore operation and maintenance problems, LONGi Green Energy announced in April this year that it had developed a set of intelligent operation and maintenance technologies. As long as you enter the sea area in the software and fill in basic data such as wave height, wind speed, silt layer thickness, temperature, etc., the system will give an optimized design plan, such as the optimal inclination angle of the component bracket, how to arrange the array, etc. .   Construction costs, which the industry is concerned about, are also constantly decreasing. According to Tan Qitite, president of Jinko Technology Research Institute, the cost of floating and anchoring systems used in domestic floating photovoltaic power plants has dropped from the previous 1.5 yuan/W to about 0.6 yuan/W. According to Everbright Securities’ prediction, with the continuous advancement of offshore floating photovoltaic technology and the scale effect brought about by the increase in installed capacity, the cost of a single watt of the corresponding power station will drop from 10 yuan/watt to 4.25 yuan/watt.     It is still too early to say that the "turbulence" has arrived, but offshore photovoltaics is full of imaginative development prospects and is attracting more and more entrants. As technical obstacles and cost problems are gradually overcome, offshore photovoltaics will become a subdivided application scenario with unlimited opportunities and contribute to the achievement of the dual carbon goal.