28th October 2023, the bamboo-based composite offshore floating photovoltaic platform "Jilin I", which was jointly developed by Yantai CIMC Raffles Ocean Technology Group (“Sino-CIMC Raffles”) and Zhonglin Green Carbon (Beijing) Technology Co. Ltd. (“Sino-Zhonglin Green Carbon”) has successfully completed the construction, transportation and offshore installation, and carried out the empirical test in the seashore area of CIMC Offshore Photovoltaic Experimental Verification and Testing Base, where is located at Yantai Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone. This marks that the CIMC has taken a milestone step in exploring the path of offshore PV towards green and economic development.
The "Jilin I" PV platform, jointly designed by the R&D teams of both sides, has completely independent intellectual property rights, which is the first platform in the world to use the jointly developed new bamboo-based composite material as the main support material, opening up the experimental application of the new green material in the field of floating photovoltaic platforms.
The material is a new type of bio-based material. It is made of bamboo through a series of new technologies. It has the advantages of lighter weight, lower cost, seawater corrosion-free, long service life, and environmental friendliness compared with the traditional steel structure. After the completion of the relevant empirical tests, the popularization and application of mature products will help promote the economic development progress of offshore floating PV platform.
In recent years, with the increasing scarcity of terrestrial resources, PV projects with a wider footprint have begun to gradually expand their application scenarios to the vast oceans. China's mainland coastline is 18,000 kilometers long, and it is measured that the installed scale of offshore PV exceeds 70GW. Up to now, Shandong Province has planned offshore PV capacity of 42GW, Jiangsu Province has planned offshore PV capacity of 12.65GW, and a number of coastal provinces/municipalities such as Zhejiang, Tianjin, Liaoning, Hainan, Fujian, etc. are actively introducing relevant policies to promote the large-scale development of offshore PV.
As a new-generation offshore photovoltaic product of CIMC Raffles, this photovoltaic power generation platform, relying on the rich offshore design experience of CIMC Raffles, takes the industrialization and application of bio-based green new materials as an opportunity to provide customers with safe, reliable, green, environmentally friendly and economically feasible offshore floating photovoltaic solutions, and to push forward the realization of the goal of "green power generation".
The successful launching of this prototype PV platform is a positively respond to the policy guideline of the National Development and Reform Commission on the Three-Year Action Plan for Accelerating the Development of "Replace Plastic with Bamboo", and fully demonstrates the R&D capability of CIMC Raffles in the offshore floating photovoltaic platform, which is an important milestone for the successful exploration of offshore photovoltaic field by CIMC Raffles.
In the next step, CIMC Raffles and Zhonglin Green Carbon will give full attention to their respective leading advantages in the fields of ocean engineering, clean energy and new bamboo materials technology, and continue to carry out joint research and development work around the formulation of standards for new bamboo-based offshore materials, product certification, and megawatt photovoltaic arrays, so as to further push forward the development progress of green, economic offshore floating PV.
