Floating Solar Panels Are Coming to Southwest Florida
Bonita Springs Utilities just approved a 1.5-megawatt floating solar array on a pond at its East Water Reclamation Facility. That is a real project, in our backyard, using a technology that most Southwest Florida homeowners have never heard of. The concept is called floatovoltaics, and while we don’t install this type of system at Florida Solar Design Group, it represents one of the most creative uses of solar technology I’ve seen in years.
As someone who has spent decades in the solar industry, I think it’s worth talking about what floating solar is, why a local utility is investing nearly $4 million in it, and what it tells us about where solar technology is heading in Florida.
What Are Floatovoltaics?
Floating solar, also called floating photovoltaics or floatovoltaics, is exactly what it sounds like. Standard solar panels are mounted on buoyant platforms, usually made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE), and anchored to the bottom or shoreline of a body of water. The panels sit just above the water surface on ponds, reservoirs, lakes, or even industrial retention basins. Electricity is transmitted from the array to shore via underwater cables, then connected to the grid or directly to on-site loads.
The technology has been around since the late 2000s, but the market has grown rapidly in recent years. According to Wikipedia’s compiled data, global installed floating solar capacity grew from roughly 3 GW in 2020 to over 13 GW by 2022. The World Bank estimates there are 6,600 large bodies of water worldwide that could host floating solar, with a combined technical capacity exceeding 4,000 GW if just 10% of their surfaces were covered.
China, India, and Indonesia currently lead the world in floating solar deployment. But the technology is gaining traction in the United States, and Florida, in particular, has become a proving ground.
The Bonita Springs Utilities Project
BSU is a nonprofit water and wastewater cooperative that serves Bonita Springs, Estero, and parts of south Lee County. Their East Water Reclamation Facility is an energy-intensive membrane bioreactor treatment plant, and energy is one of the utility’s largest operating costs. The floating solar array will sit on an existing pond at the facility and is expected to offset roughly 60% of the site’s electricity demand once operational.
The project was approved by BSU’s board in March 2026, with a total cost of approximately $3.95 million. BSU’s Executive Director Andy Koebel told Gulfshore Business that federal tax credits are expected to cover about 40% of the project cost, and the system should pay for itself within about 10 years. After that, it generates pure savings. The system will operate under a net metering agreement with FPL.
BSU’s Director of Operations Don Woodruff described the pond as essentially unused real estate, and called floating solar a great fit for utilities that have open storage reservoirs. Construction is underway off-site, with installation expected this fall and the system expected to be operational by late 2026 or early 2027.
Where Is the BSU Floating Solar Project?
The floating solar array will be installed on a pond at the Bonita Springs Utilities East Water Reclamation Facility at 11550 Operations Way in Bonita Springs, off Wellfield Road.
Why Water? The Technical Advantages
Solar panels have a well-known performance problem: heat. As panel temperature rises, voltage drops, and energy output decreases. This is particularly relevant in Southwest Florida, where roof surface temperatures in summer can easily exceed 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Panels mounted on a roof are absorbing heat from two directions: the sun above and the roofing material below.
Water changes that equation. The evaporative cooling effect of a pond or reservoir keeps floating panels significantly cooler than their rooftop or ground-mounted counterparts. Industry data consistently shows floating solar panels producing 5% to 15% more energy than equivalent land-based systems in hot climates. That thermal advantage is real money over the life of a system.
But the benefits are not one-directional. The panels shade the water surface, which reduces evaporation by as much as 30% in some installations. For a water utility like BSU, that is a meaningful secondary benefit: saving treated water that would otherwise be lost to the atmosphere. The shading can also suppress algae growth by limiting sunlight penetration, which reduces water treatment costs.
Florida Is Becoming a Floating Solar Leader
BSU is not the first utility in Florida to go this route. The state has quietly built a growing portfolio of floating solar projects over the past six years.
In 2020, the City of Altamonte Springs installed a 1 MW floating array on a retention pond at its Regional Water Reclamation Facility. That system, built by D3Energy, was the largest floating solar array in Florida at the time and was designed to produce close to 90% of the facility’s energy needs at peak output. That same year, FPL partnered with Miami-Dade County to deploy a 402-panel floating solar installation on Blue Lagoon near Miami International Airport. At 160 kW, the FPL project was more of a research testbed than a serious power producer, but it was notable as the first floating solar array at an airport in the United States.
Tampa Electric followed in 2022 with a 1 MW floating array near Apollo Beach. Duke Energy launched a floating system at its Hines Energy Complex in Bartow in 2023. That project was particularly interesting because it sits on the 1,200-acre cooling pond of a major power plant, demonstrating how floating solar can be layered onto existing energy infrastructure. Orange County Utilities completed a 1.2 MW project in 2024, and the Orlando Utilities Commission announced a 2 MW floating array in 2025.
The BSU project continues this trajectory and brings the technology to Southwest Florida for the first time at meaningful scale.
Floating Solar vs. Rooftop Solar vs. Ground Mounts
To be clear: we do not install floating solar systems at Florida Solar Design Group. Our work is residential rooftop solar, battery backup, and related systems for homeowners in Lee, Charlotte, and Collier Counties. Floating solar is a utility-scale, commercial technology that requires specialized engineering, marine-grade hardware, and anchoring systems designed for aquatic environments. It is a different animal entirely from what goes on your roof. It won’t be economically viable on a small scale, especially compared to traditional residential installations.
That said, I find the floating solar concept compelling for one specific reason: it uses space that has no other productive purpose. A retention pond at a water treatment plant is not going to be developed for housing or agriculture. It’s not someone’s backyard. It’s just water, sitting there, doing nothing beyond its designed function. Putting solar panels on that surface is a genuinely creative use of otherwise wasted real estate.
This is actually one of the areas where floating solar has a legitimate edge over ground-mounted systems. I’ve been vocal about my belief that ground-mounted solar is generally a poor choice in Southwest Florida. Ground mounts consume usable land, require expensive racking and concrete foundations, face vegetation management challenges in our climate, and are subject to shading from surrounding trees and structures. And don’t forget recent hurricanes that destroyed many ground-mounted exposed solar arrays. They make sense in agricultural or desert settings with cheap, flat, open land. In a residential setting in Lee County? Rarely.
Floating solar avoids the land-use problem entirely. Yes, it costs more than rooftop solar on a per-watt basis. Floating systems carry a 10% to 25% cost premium over ground-mounted arrays, according to GreenLancer, primarily because of the specialized HDPE floats, marine-grade anchoring, and underwater cabling. But when you factor in that you are not buying land, not clearing vegetation, not pouring concrete footings, and you are getting a 5% to 15% efficiency boost from water cooling, the economics start to look reasonable for commercial and utility applications. BSU’s projected 10-year payback is respectable by any standard.
Rooftop solar remains the most cost-effective option for homeowners in Southwest Florida. Your roof is already there. It’s already a structure. You don’t need to build a substructure, buy land, or float anything. You just bolt panels to it. That simplicity is why residential rooftop solar consistently delivers the best return on investment for individual homeowners.
The Global Picture
Floating solar is growing worldwide at a pace that is hard to ignore. The Asia-Pacific region accounts for about 70% of global installed capacity, led by China, India, and Indonesia. China completed a 1 GW open-sea floating solar plant off Dongying City in 2024, the largest in the world. India’s Tata Power commissioned a 126 MW floating project in Madhya Pradesh. These are not pilot projects or demonstrations. They are serious power plants.
The World Bank has identified the United States as having more floating solar potential than any other country, with suitable water bodies distributed across the country. Wood Mackenzie projects about 0.7 GW of floating solar capacity additions in the US by 2033. That’s modest compared to Asia, but the technology is clearly gaining momentum, especially for municipal utilities and water treatment facilities that already have ponds and reservoirs on-site.
Research published in Environmental Science & Technology by Cornell University found that while floating panels on small ponds can increase greenhouse gas emissions from the water beneath them, the effect was much less severe than expected, and overall, floatovoltaics still carry a lower carbon footprint than traditional land-based solar installations. Ecological impacts remain an active area of study, but the evidence so far suggests the trade-offs are manageable, especially on man-made water bodies.
What About Hurricanes?
Any time someone proposes putting something outside in Southwest Florida, the first question is always about storms. Floating solar systems use anchoring designed to keep panels in position during high winds and wave action. The panels themselves can flex with water movement rather than fighting it, which provides some natural resilience. A 16 MW floating solar project in Zhanjiang, China survived a direct hit from a super typhoon in 2024 without damage, according to the manufacturer Mibet Energy.
That said, Florida hurricanes are Florida hurricanes. Long-term performance data for floating solar in Category 4 or 5 wind events is essentially nonexistent because the technology is still relatively young. BSU is presumably making engineering decisions based on the best available data, and there’s reason to be optimistic. But anyone telling you floating solar is hurricane-proof would be getting ahead of the evidence.
The Bottom Line
Floating solar is not something we install, and it’s not something any Southwest Florida homeowner needs to think about for their own home. But as a solar professional, I think it’s one of the most interesting developments in the industry right now, and the fact that it’s happening right here in Bonita Springs makes it worth paying attention to.
BSU’s 1.5 MW floating array is a smart project for a utility that needs to control energy costs on energy-intensive water treatment. It uses space that would otherwise sit idle, benefits from the thermal advantages of water, and will generate real savings for BSU’s member-owners over its lifetime. Florida has quietly become one of the leading states for floating solar deployment, and the BSU project is the latest example of that trend reaching Southwest Florida.
For homeowners, rooftop solar remains the most practical and cost-effective path to energy independence. Your roof is your substructure. Your home is the load center. The economics are proven. If you want to explore what solar can do for your home, give us a call at Florida Solar Design Group. We’ll design a system that actually fits your situation.
