Birth of Ciel & Terre USA
Floating solar roots are in France, where Bernard, Ciel & Terre’s founder and Alexis, CEO, trailblazed the solar market with floating solar.
Those roots grew first in Asia around 2013 where the geographic and political contexts were more favorable. A few years later, in 2017, efforts to deploy floating solar in Southeast Asia paid off. They enabled around 13 countries to benefit from floating solar installations, with an accumulated green energy production of 2 700 GWh since the first, grid-injected or consumed in-house, only with Ciel & Terre’s projects.
To continue spreading the word about floating solar considering the positive outcome and return on experience in Asia, Ciel & Terre International started responding to inquiries and reaching out to American developers and EPCs in 2016 from our global headquarters in Lille, France. From there we were able to design and supply our floating, racking, and anchoring systems for several small projects in Florida, Massachusetts, Colorado, and California.
“Even if the FPV market was already big in Asia and Europe in 2018, it was really new and pretty much unknown here, so we had to work again on spreading the word about floating solar. We had to build everything again step by step, small/pilot projects leading to larger projects. Today, FPV is well known, and we have a large pipeline of projects. A lot of people believe in floating solar.”
Floating solar in the US: state of play
Since opening, the US branch has completed 34 projects totaling 46 MWp. And, more than 10 projects equivalent to 30 MWp are live for 2023 and 2024.
Below are some key milestones since Ciel & Terre USA inception:
First project built in the USA
USA office opened
Started manufacturing in the USA
Built first MW-scale project in the USA
Built first multi MW project in US
Moved manufacturing
Moved HQ office
Built current largest project in the US
Pipeline keeps growing
Ciel & Terre USA has so far provided our Hydrelio floating solar technology for projects located on various types of climates and ponds: reservoirs used for water treatment and irrigation, in hot as well as in snowy regions, on self-consumption and grid-injection purposes.
Canoe Brook floating solar project
Biggest floating solar project in the USA in 2023
8.9 MWp
Water supply pond Freshwater 8.2% of water coverage ratio
16 510 PV modules Grid injection
Bottom anchoring 2.5 m water level variation
Ciel & Terre’s added value and track record
With developers and EPCs, as well as pond and reservoir owners, becoming more and more comfortable with floating solar, we believe the future is bright for floating solar in the US. Our current pipeline has over 160 projects totaling over 1.3 GW. Next up is South and Central America and The Caribbean. Ciel & Terre USA has a few small projects in Chile, Colombia, and Panama, but we know there is much more potential across The Americas. Ciel & Terre International has 290 projects totaling 850 MWp installed to date. With this recent momentum, the Americas will eventually catch up with our Asian partners and we will have projects like Changbin in Taiwan (88 MWp) here too.
By Laura, Marketing
Featuring Chris and Emily , Ciel & Terre USA
