Biological power
The team also came up with the idea of an offshore biophotovoltaic power station consisting of several vast floating ‘lily pads’ coated in algae.
The power output per unit area of a BPV power station would ideally match that of an equivalently-sized offshore wind farm (5-6 watts per square metre) which should be enough to exploit this technology commercially.
Such a power station would even generate energy during the night as a result of excess electrons being stored inside the plant cells during daylight hours.