Mobile floating PV plant powers Paris’ Olympic village

Transported 900 metres along the Seine, a 78 kW temporary photovoltaic power plant has docked at the Athletes’ Village to meet the needs of the Olympic and Paralympic Place for renewable electricity consumption.

August 7, 2024 Francois Puthod

Assembled and dismantled in 24 hours, the floating solar power plant can be reused for other events to replace generators.

Image: EDF ENR

From pv magazine France

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

Operating on pure self-consumption, the temporary solar power plant does not feed-in electricity into the grid, requiring real-time adaptation 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 installation’s main advantage is that it can be set up and dismantled very easily.

Innovative process

To unfold it on the pontoon, all you have to do is open the doors of the shipping container that houses it, pull the solar wings, which are pre-wired, connect them together and plug the whole thing into the container – where the inverter, protection systems and all the electrical parts are located – to have an operational solar power plant in less than 24 hours.

The panels are unfolded like ping-pong tables. *Image: EDF ENR*

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

Beyond performance, this type of PV structure, innovative in its process, is an advantageous alternative to the use of generators to supply electricity to events such as the Olympic Games, trade fairs or festivals, or even isolated sites not accessible to the public network. The Voies Navigables de France (VNF), the French navigation authority responsible for the management of the majority of the country’s inland waterways, is the first to take an interest in it, particularly to carry out construction sites along the banks of rivers.

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