David Roberts has a good piece at Vox talking about where the action is, so to speak, on solar power; and one of the things that he thinks is going to be "big" soon is more floating solar farms on lakes and (possibly) at sea.
The big problem I can foresee with solar panels over salt water is the heightened need to keep them clean from salt crust - surely you would need to be washing them down almost daily. But then again, some of the spare power could perhaps be used to desalinate some sea water so you don't have to waste expensive chlorinated potable water doing it.
If the problems could be overcome, Moreton Bay off Brisbane seems a pretty ideal place for it - large parts are very shallow and even smaller boats have to avoid those parts at low tide, and Moreton Island provides a lot of wind shelter.
The big picture from Robert's article is interesting though - he quotes people saying that the dramatic drop in price of old fashioned silicon panels means that all the new technology solar panels with their incremental improvements in efficiency just aren't really worth using. That makes sense, but it's sort of depressing if you work in research, isn't it? - spend most of your career on developing the world's most efficient solar cell technology only to find that no one wants it because it's hardly worth retooling factories for the efficiency increase you've achieved.
Anyway, remember my previous ideas: the new Snowy Mountains plan to increase its use as power storage by hydro should have its water pumps powered by floating solar cells on the storage lakes.
And Wivenhoe Dam should be half covered in floating solar power too for South East Queensland's power needs.
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