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Floating photovoltaic solar systems offer numerous advantages, including reduced land usage, diminished water evaporation, and lowered thermal losses compared to terrestrial installations. If widely adopted, this system has the potential to generate a staggering 10,600 TWh of electricity. The widespread implementation of this technology could curtail water evaporation by approximately 30%. Floating solar power plants operate at temperatures about 20°C cooler than their terrestrial counterparts, enabling floating panels to yield up to 33.3% more energy. Furthermore, floating photovoltaic systems exhibit an 18.18% greater efficacy in curbing greenhouse gas emissions compared to their land-based counterparts. The heightened adoption of this system is driven by diverse factors, including escalating energy demand, ecological concerns, land-use constraints, and water scarcity, all contributing to sustainability. Despite the manifold benefits of these systems, there exist drawbacks associated with this technology, such as heightened panel corrosion, challenges in cleaning, and potential adverse environmental impacts that need to be addressed. This study meticulously examines the merits and challenges of floating photovoltaic systems in comparison to land-based installations through the content analysis method, meticulously categorizing pertinent research within the existing literature. Tailored approaches to cooling and cleaning, suited to the distinct installation conditions and environments of these systems, are concisely outlined. Through a comprehensive literature review and a meticulous comparison of cooling methods, it has been ascertained that the application of such strategies for floating solar plants yields an efficiency increase of 5-7% in the short term. Consequently, this study furnishes an initial guide for researchers and designers engaged in the development of both floating and land-based solar photovoltaic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presented study focused on developing an innovative decision-making framework to select the best renewable-power-plant technologies, considering comprehensive techno-economic and environmental variables. Due to the favourable conditions, Australia was selected as the case study. A fuzzy-logic method and analytical hierarchy process were applied to prioritize different renewable-energy power plants. The techno-economic factors included levelized cost of energy, initial cost, simple payback time, and operation and maintenance costs along with environmental factors including carbon payback time, energy payback time and greenhouse-gas emissions were used to rank the power plants. The results showed that the capital cost and simple payback time had the highest priority from an economic point of view. In comparison, greenhouse-gas emissions and carbon payback time were the dominant environmental factors. The analysis results provided economic and environmental priority tables for developing different power plants in the current state and a future scenario by 2030. The fuzzy results and pairwise composite matrix of alternatives indicated that the onshore wind, offshore wind, single-axis tracker polycrystalline photovoltaic, single-axis tracker monocrystalline photovoltaic, fix-tilted polycrystalline photovoltaic and fix-tilted monocrystalline photovoltaic scored the highest in the current state. In contrast, by 2030, the single-axis tracker photovoltaic power plants will be the best choice in the future scenario in Australia. Finally, the results were used and analysed to recommend and suggest several policy implementations and future research studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]