French Firm Makes Solar Panels Float With Mobile Factories

Shipping empty space across oceans never made much sense, and now a French company has solved that puzzle for floating solar power.

Araymond, a fastening solutions provider based in Grenoble, France, unveiled a game-changing approach at a Munich trade show in June. Instead of transporting massive, hollow floats in containers, they bring mobile factories to project sites and manufacture the components right there.

The system, called Neluma, fits inside standard shipping containers. These mini-factories sit on the banks of lakes and reservoirs, transforming aluminum coils into six-meter tubes that keep solar panels afloat. A team of just 10 workers can assemble enough equipment to support 1 megawatt of solar capacity each week.

The tubes contain air-filled balloons that provide buoyancy, and they're partially filled with water for extra stability. This clever design withstands winds up to 160 kilometers per hour during normal operation and gusts reaching 220 kilometers per hour.

Here's where it gets really smart: the water ballast reduces the number of anchors needed by about one-third. Since anchoring represents a major cost in floating solar projects, this design makes clean energy more affordable from day one.

The panels tilt at 15 degrees, which helps rain wash away dust naturally and cuts down on maintenance visits. The design also maximizes how much of the water surface can be covered with panels, generating more power from the same space.

The Ripple Effect

Araymond already helped install more than 22 gigawatts of land-based solar panels worldwide. Now they're taking that expertise to the water, and the timing couldn't be better.

The company completed its first full-scale demonstration in southern France in 2024. Since then, eight installations have popped up around the globe, from European gravel pits to Indian reservoirs to Brazilian agricultural water basins.

In India, Araymond built a demonstration project at the Jindal Power thermal plant in just 10 days. That pilot supports plans for several hundred megawatts of floating solar capacity.

Brazilian projects focus on private reservoirs serving farms and food producers, generating electricity right where it's needed while helping conserve water through reduced evaporation.

For each new market, Araymond partners with local aluminum suppliers and construction companies, creating jobs and building regional clean energy expertise. European developers are already in talks for multi-megawatt projects on former industrial water bodies, often with public utilities and government agencies.

By cutting transportation costs and carbon emissions while making installation faster and cheaper, this floating factory approach removes key barriers that have slowed floating solar adoption.

Clean energy is coming to every corner of the planet, one floating panel at a time.