Floating some Ideas for an Array?

[svetz]

I've been thinking about pitching an idea to my local power Co-Op about building a small solar test array. Thought I'd float it by you to get your ideas as to how it might be improved. Land In any solar farm, the land is expensive. Where I live land is at a premium. But we are literally surrounded by shallow waters not suitable for building upon. The Florida bay in particular is well protected from large waves even during hurricanes as it is fairly shallow in most places. Building a floating array also provides areas of cooler water for local fish to grow. Not using land should mean free or at least cheap for the space. But no one is going to want an eyesore in their waterways. These floating solar islands could be built on the far side on the many small islands running the length of the keys where they would not impact tourism, I go kayaking/fishing out there and rarely see anyone. But, even though the land is less expensive, being a couple of miles out over water would increase costs to pipe energy back to shore.

Floats
Floats could be constructed from waste shipping foam (an otherwise unusable waste product in our society that does not decompose) that is chopped up and reformed inside plastic shells, similar to how chicken bits are glued together to make chicken tenders. Even if the plastic shell is damaged, there would be no loss in buoyancy or foam leakage.

Hurricanes
No panel tilt reduces windage. Floating allows the array to “bend” with destructive wind energy rather than break and can be accomplished by chaining floats together. This makes them less expensive to build than rigid structures designed to survive 200 mph winds.

Cooling I know some floating farms like the one to the right actually let the back of the panel rest against the water to keep them cool to increase efficiency. They can do this because there are very few, if any, waves. I can't really see that in a saltwater environment with waves here. But if you can think of a way to make it work cheaply, then let's hear it!

Maintenance Costs
Using sealed microinverters will keep them impervious to corrosion and single points of failure. That means the utility won't have to dispatch a boat until several are offline. AC also does better over long-distance transmission.

Area
Building over water also offers another unique opportunity, you can get to panels from underneath. A land-based solar farm is about 4 acres per MW, but if you stick all the panels together edge-to-edge it would only take about an acre.

Possibly a floating drone to do maintenance (e.g., replace a microinverter)? Worse case, human divers. Well floaters, I see these as being in very shallow waters (just a few feet deep, but very mucky bottoms).

Money
Utility-scale solar farm installations are usually under $1/W with microinverters. But a lot of that cost is the land and mounting. If the panels are clipped to cheap floats chained together, there are no expensive aluminum rails. But if you stick with the $1/W, then it's less than a 7-year payback at FPL's current wholesale rate of $0.08283/kWh (what my co-op buys power for).

The U.S. DoE is actively searching for novel projects, so grants or low-rate loans for a pilot might also be available. Might have a decent chance as lessons learned in building and maintaining such an array should be pretty valuable.

Inputs
What problems do you foresee and how can they prevented? What can be done to reduce costs?
For example, how would you keep the crocodiles from using them as sunning platforms?