Ocean Sun repairing damage to Statkraft's floating solar plant in Albania

Norwegian floating solar technology developer Ocean Sun said it is repairing severe damage to Statkraft's first unit of a floating solar plant located at the Banja reservoir in southeastern Albania.

The company is working on retrieving the floating ring with membrane and two connected barges, which were damaged and partly submerged on June 9, Ocean Sun said in a press release last week.

The cause of the incident remains to be identified.

Statkraft said on June 3 it began commercial operations at the first unit of its Banja reservoir floating solar plant developed by Ocean Sun. The 1,536-solar-panel unit with an installed capacity of 0.5 MWp covers nearly 4,000 sq m and is planned to generate electricity for Albania's national electricity grid.

In the second half of 2021, Statkraft intends to install additional three floating units with a combined capacity of 1.5 MWp at the Banja reservoir where it already is operating its 72 MW Banja hydropower plant.

The solar power plant project has a total investment cost of about 2 million euro ($2.4 million), according to an earlier statement by Statkraft.

Statkraft, a leading company in hydro power internationally and Europe’s largest generator of renewable energy, is present in Albania through its wholly-owned subsidiaries Devoll Hydropower and Statkraft Renewables Albania.

($ = 0.8373 euro)

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