Every solar farm you have driven past looks about the same from the road. Rows of dark panels tilted up at the sky, angled south, all of them waiting on noon.
A vertical floating solar installation with a capacity of 1.87 megawatts has begun operating on a gravel pit lake in Gilching, located in Bavaria’s Starnberg district. Developed by Gauting-based engineering firm SINN Power, the project features 2,600 bifacial photovoltaic modules oriented vertically to face east and west rather than the traditional south-facing tilt. The array was connected to the power grid on August 21 of last year and officially inaugurated on October 10. The installation is capable of generating approximately 2 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually.
The facility is situated on water owned by Kies- und Quetschwerk Jais, a gravel and crushing enterprise that excavated the site. Gottfried Jais, the managing director of the gravel operation, serves as a co-investor in the solar plant, which supplies the majority of its electricity directly to the on-site machinery, including crushers, conveyors, and pumps. According to the company, the installation reduced the facility's grid electricity purchases by nearly 60 percent during early operations, with expectations to reach 70 percent, and generated over 100 megawatt-hours during its first three weeks.
The vertical orientation addresses German water regulations, specifically section 36 of the Federal Water Resources Act, which permits floating solar only on artificial or heavily modified water bodies and restricts coverage to a maximum of 15 percent of the surface area. Because the panels stand upright, the shadow cast covers only 4.65 percent of the water surface. SINN Power notes that a planned second phase of 1.7 megawatts will keep the combined footprint under 10 percent. Legal questions remain regarding how authorities measure surface coverage for vertical arrays, prompting a Bundesrat resolution in September 2025 asking the federal government to review the rule.
Engineering a vertical solar array on open water presents wind-load challenges akin to managing a sail. SINN Power utilized a patented system called SKipp, featuring concrete-ballasted keels extending up to 5.2 feet beneath the surface and a cable arrangement rather than a rigid steel frame. This design allows the rows to deflect under wind pressure and shed resistance. The rows maintain a minimum spacing of 13 feet from one another to permit wind flow, prevent self-shading, and allow light and air to reach the water below. Prior to the Gilching installation, the company tested a smaller vertical pilot project in Baden-Baden for over 18 months.
The east-west configuration shifts power generation away from midday peaks, aligning production with morning and evening demand periods. This timing helps mitigate the financial impact of negative day-ahead power prices in Germany, which reached a record 573 hours in 2025 during sunny midday intervals. Data from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy indicates that utilizing east-west orientations could raise the commercially viable floating solar potential on German artificial lakes to 2.5 gigawatts, compared to 1.8 gigawatts for south-facing systems on the same water bodies.
Originally reported by Autonocion.com on Jul 26, 2026.
