Around 7% of the water surface of the reservoir named “El
Negret” (Fig. 8) was used as a real scale prototype in order to check
the behaviour of the system and make the appropriate technical
and experimental changes.
The reservoir is located in Agost, a town near Alicante (East of
Spain). The earth reservoir was covered with a high density polyethylene
(HDPE) geomembrane. The reservoir has a slope section of
2.8 Horizontal/1.00 Vertical, maximum slope height of 5 m and
maximum water storage capacity of 20,000 m3.
The prototype was installed in August 2009 and up to now its
global performance has been highly satisfactory. For a peak power
of 22.27 kWp the yearly energy yield was 28,349 kWh which corresponds
to a performance ratio of 71.45%.
The in-situ performance of the system has served to verify the
feasibility of the solution as well as the following issues:
Buoyancy conditions and free-draft measures under different
load conditions.
Efficient support of the modules on the reservoir slope,
particularly at critical design points (vertex lines between
planes).
Mechanical behaviour of the system.
Testing of different elastic joints in order to properly define
load-displacement requirements.
Cost estimation and assembling process.