The world’s largest floating solar array outside China will be up and running in about six weeks after record-pace installation in the Netherlands, according to its developer.

BayWa re claimed the 27.4MW Bomhofsplas plant will be the biggest yet built beyond the People’s Republic when completed on a sandpit lake in Zwolle with 73,000 modules. German developer BayWa has already completed 25MW of floating PV this year elsewhere.

“In only two weeks we have built 8MW of the project, peaking at constructing 1MW a day. That’s quite a significant increase in speed of delivery,” said BayWa re.

Floating solar arrays are an increasingly attractive option for large-scale PV deployment at reservoirs and alongside hydropower facilities, especially where land use is constrained elsewhere, according to a World Bank report on the sector.

The largest floating PV array currently operational is a 150MW project in Anhui, China. But that and the Bomhofsplas project are both soon set to be overshadowed by massive developments elsewhere in the world.

A 145MW project in Indonesia, a 1GW plant in India, and an eye-watering 2.9GW in South Korea have all been reported by Recharge in recent months.

As recently as last week, potential for 2.74GW for floating PV on Germany’s former lignite mines was pinpointed in a study by the Fraunhofer ISE institute, commissioned by Bomhofsplas builder BayWa re.