Heliotopia

Research & engineering

Floating solar that follows the sun.

We design and build floating two-axis sun-tracking structures for marine and coastal water — platforms that hold their panels to the sun through the whole arc of the day, without taking land.

The platform

Two-axis tracking on open water

The platform carries solar panels on open water and keeps them squarely facing the sun through the day. It is stable under working sea conditions, moored to the seabed, and scales by array to the site and the load.

01

Tracks in two axes

Panels turn and tilt to meet the sun squarely from morning to evening — the hours fixed arrays give away.

02

Held by tensegrity

A balance of tension and compression rather than a rigid frame — light, strong, and moving with the water instead of fighting it.

03

Grows its foundations

With Dr. Thomas Goreau, platforms are anchored and ballasted in Biorock mineral accretion — structure grown in place on the seabed.

Rendering of the complete floating platform: a hexagonal array of tracking solar panels around a central geodesic dome, on blue coastal water with a forested shoreline and lighthouse behind
The platform complete — a tracking array around a central dome, sited in coastal water
Grown foundations

Anchored by mineral accretion

Most floating structures are held down by things manufactured, shipped and sunk. Ours are held by structure that is grown in place — an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Thomas Goreau.

Anchoring

Biorock anchors the platform to the seabed — accreted structure that develops in position rather than being delivered and dropped.

Ballast, grown to specification

Beneath the floats, Biorock is grown to each client’s specification and serves as the stabilising weight for the platform.

Mineral accretion is living substrate — the same structure that holds a platform steady gives something back to the water it sits in.

Delivered complete

Each structure is engineered, built and commissioned by us, and delivered to the client complete and ready to operate. Prototypes have been built, put on the water, measured, and fed back into the next design.

Prototype platform silhouetted on calm water beneath an orange dusk sky
Prototype on the water at dusk — Vancouver Island, British Columbia
Enquiries

Talk to us about a site

Tell us where it is, roughly how much power you need, and what the water is like — we will take it from there.

[email to be confirmed]

Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada