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CEZ Group, a Czech energy company, has announced a new solution for securing photovoltaic panels in unstable subsoil including waste ponds, spoil heaps, and other unfirm areas.
The company is testing central sections of conveyor belts in strip coal mines to see if they can act as structures for carrying photovoltaic power plants in the future.
As these structures are usually bored into the ground, they cannot be used in areas with unstable subsoil. Engineers from CEZ Group’s PRODECO have been developing prototypes that can cope with moving soil. In doing so, retired mining equipment could get a second life.
For example, as mining is phased out the central sections of the conveyors see the steel structures with their side rails serving as supporting structures for photovoltaic power plants.
Additionally, following its vision of ‘Clean Energy for Tomorrow’, CEZ Group will build new PV power plants by 2030 with a capacity of thousands of MWs.
Jan Kalina, a member of the CEZ Group Board of Directors and head of the Renewable and Conventional Energy Division, explained that the PV plants are placed primarily on infertile soil, in brownfields, and where industrial mining has finished.
“Before life returns to such places, they can be useful for generating renewable energy from the sun. The soil deposited in spoil heaps is loose, it only settles gradually, and it may take decades for it to stabilise.
We must adapt the technology used for building photovoltaic plants, and our goal is to behave in a sustainable manner and not to needlessly increase our carbon footprint.”
Upcoming uses
Thousands of these modules will be available in the Czechia’s Bílina Mine alone, once coal mining is phased out. Several pilot structures are already deployed on a reclaimed area close to the Mine extraction area. During 2023 experts used the area to test how PV panels cope with subsoil movement.
“The positive news is that the performance of the solar panels did not drop. For unstable subsoils, however, it will be more suitable to use technologies other than conventional silicon panels, such as thin-layer panels without silicon cells, in which the semiconductor is applied directly to the glass,” adds Kalina.
By 2030, CEZ Group plans to contribute to the Czech energy sector transitioning to zero-emission by building renewable sources with a capacity of up to 6GW. This project is part of a series of tests examining the suitability of land types for placing renewable energy sources – such as water surfaces.
The first Czech floating PV power plant has been positioned in the upper reservoir of the Štechovice pumped-storage power plant, which stands out as a plant placed on water whose surface level constantly fluctuates. |
