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Floating solar makes sense in some dams that want to reduce evaporation, as they need something floating there anyway and it's almost always freshwater.

I don't think land is more than 10% of the cost of solar in most places anyway - rooftop solar can cost $5000, and I'd expect rural areas to cost less than $500 for a paddock with the area of a house.

With solar, available land isn't really a constraint so I don't think there is a huge need to put solar panels in the water versus just putting them on empty land or roofs.

It could be used with pumped storage to reduce evaporative losses. Pumped storage doesn't really care what the temperature of the reservoir is, so instead of heating it up with the sun, you keep more water in the reservoir through less evaporation, and extract the solar energy that would otherwise do nothing.

The largest floating solar under development that I know of is in Seychelles. It’s about 5MW. Haven’t heard much on the development timeline post Covid.