Ciel & Terre has made a thriving business installing floating solar around the world

Source: David Dodge | · GREEN ENERGY FUTURES · | March 13, 2024

The idea of floating solar has been around for many years but Ciel & Terre has made a thriving business out of it by installing more than 300 floating solar systems around the world.

It turns out there are many places and applications where land and roof space is in short supply and floating solar fits the bill.

Ciel & Terre installs projects on water treatment ponds, quarry ponds and other bodies of water not used for other purposes such as recreation.

Their largest project is an 88-megawatt Changbin project in Taiwan which was installed on calm salt water around the coast. The project is being expanded to 192 megawatts.

Ciel et Terre was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in France and has more than 200 employees with offices in Taiwan, Japan, India and in the U.S.

Ciel et Terre has installed more than half a gigawatt of floating solar with 1.6 gigawatts of projects in development.

“The markets that have really taken off for us are the island nations like Japan and Taiwan, where they don’t have enough land to build these large-scale solar systems, so they use the inland water bodies,” says Chris Bartle the sales and marketing manager for Ciel & Terre in the U.S.