With limited land available for large-scale renewable energy projects, Singapore has turned to an unusual location for solar power — the sea. Off the northern coast of the island, in the Strait of Johor, around 13,000 solar panels have been installed as part of an offshore floating solar project designed to generate clean electricity without consuming valuable land.
For a densely populated city-state of almost six million people, finding space for renewable energy infrastructure is a major challenge. Singapore covers only around 280 square miles, leaving little room for conventional ground-mounted solar farms. Rooftop solar can contribute to the country’s clean-energy ambitions, but its potential is limited by the amount of available urban space.
That has pushed developers to explore the country’s surrounding waters.
Taking Solar Power Offshore
Renewable energy company EDP APAC and its subsidiary Sunseap Group turned to the waters near Woodlands for a major floating solar installation. Instead of occupying scarce land, the project places solar panels on floating structures in the sea, allowing Singapore to expand renewable energy generation while making use of its maritime space.
But building a solar farm on saltwater is considerably more complicated than installing panels on land.
The floating structures must withstand waves, currents, tides and strong winds, while the equipment is continuously exposed to corrosive seawater. Engineers therefore designed specialised anchoring and tension systems using marine-grade materials to keep the solar array stable and aligned with the grid.
Initially, the biggest concern appeared to be straightforward: could the installation survive the ocean?
Engineers carried out extensive testing to ensure the floating system could withstand the mechanical forces created by changing weather and sea conditions.
But once the system was operating, another problem began to emerge from beneath the water.
The Barnacle Problem
The unexpected challenge was marine growth, particularly barnacles attaching themselves to submerged parts of the floating solar system.
Barnacles and other marine organisms can accumulate on underwater structures, adding weight and increasing resistance against currents and waves. Over time, this biological growth can place additional stress on anchors, cables and floating components.
What engineers had initially treated primarily as a structural and weather challenge therefore became a living, biological engineering problem.
The experience highlights one of the less obvious difficulties associated with taking renewable energy infrastructure offshore. Solar panels may spend their working lives above the water, but the structures supporting them interact continuously with a complex marine ecosystem.
Why Singapore Is Taking the Risk
Despite these challenges, offshore solar offers Singapore an important opportunity.
The country’s land constraints mean that every additional renewable energy installation has to compete for limited space. Floating solar can potentially expand generation capacity without requiring large areas of land to be cleared or developed.
Singapore’s experience could also become valuable for other densely populated coastal countries looking for ways to increase renewable energy production.
However, offshore solar developers will have to consider far more than sunlight and electricity generation. Corrosion, marine life, waves, anchoring, maintenance and extreme weather all become part of the engineering equation.
The Singapore project therefore represents more than another solar farm. It is effectively a test of whether renewable energy infrastructure can successfully coexist with — and withstand — the ocean environment.
And in this case, the first serious challenge wasn’t necessarily the waves engineers had spent years preparing for. It was the barnacles they hadn’t expected.
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