Project Nexus was officially approved for construction at the Feb. 8 board meeting of the Turlock Irrigation District as a small-scale proof of concept for the since 2015 brain-child of environmental engineers Dr. Brandi McKuin, Prof. Sarah Kurtz, Prof. Marie-Odile Fortier, Prof. Roger Bales and their teams.
McKuin (she specializes in food-energy-water sustainability):
“Solar canals are an example of an energy-water nexus that offer multiple sustainability benefits. Using water canals for solar infrastructure conserves water while producing renewable electricity and avoids converting large tracts of land to solar development … “The cooler microclimate next to the canal mitigates panel heating, which enhances PV efficiency, and shade from the panels mitigates aquatic weed growth which is a major maintenance [and pollution] issue.”
Unlike “floatovoltaics”, the panels don’t touch the water — they’re a shaped canopy above it that receive sunlight, shade the water (which circulates coolth), allows wildlife access, and drips condensation back in. According to the research, the solaring of California’s 4,000 miles of wide-span and narrow-span canals would offer an evaporative savings of 82%, or
63 billion gallons of water annually (enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or meet the residential water needs of more than 2 million people
while generating 13 gigawatts of solar power annually, equal to
about one sixth of the state’s current installed capacity
for a “20% to 50% higher return on investment compared to on-ground solar panelling. Context:, California regulators are pushing to install 20 gigawatts of additional renewable capacity across the state by 2030. Even more would be even better! Especially with more bang for the tax and personal buck.
McKuin again:
“Aquatic weeds are a problem [in canals]. Water is scarce, and they take up water … [their roots] can blow out drains and pipes ... [they] can accumulate sediment and disrupt the flow [of water].”
Stopping sunlight from reaching aquatic weeds with solar panels, by contrast, could help reduce their growth [and decrease need for chemical weed suppression] and make it easier for water to flow. But, McKuin said, further research is definitely needed into how a project as big as covering thousands of miles of canals with solar panels could impact the environment.
The solar-canal concept has seemed to me like it might be minimally environmentally invasive in total construction, maintenance and operation, benefits that tend to be verrrry hard to come by.
I have been looking forward to this for SO long! California’s water conflicts have been been especial hell upon indigenous people trying to protect the environment we all need and to preserve their homeplaces, livelihoods and cultures. I’m no engineer, but solar canopies over canals strike me as one of the best ways to mitigate the impacts of canals as invasive if necessary infrastructure, and to decrease victimizing and subordinating small-groups’ and individual’s needs for the sake of the majority’s advantage.
Anyway, more details on this project and background are here:
■ <big>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00693-8 Energy and water co-benefits from covering canals with solar panels.</big>
18 March 2021
■ tid.org Turlock Irrigation District 2018 Project Nexus webpage (images, links, partners, data) anticipating ground-breaking in fall 2022 and construction compete by the end of 2024.
■ gizmodo.com/ noted 2018 National Renewable Energy Laboratory research estimates that just covering the country’s thousands of man-made reservoirs with floating panels could meet up to 10% of US electricity needs, and countries that have done it since then are realizing some gains. 18 March 2021
■ water.ca.gov Dept of Water Resources awards $20 million in California 2021-22 allocated budget funding. 8 February 2022
■ news.ucmerced.edu The project is a public-private-academic partnership among TID, the DWR, Solar AquaGrid and UC Merced. 8 February 2022
■ capRadio.org — There will be three separate locations in Stanislaus County. 16 February 2022.
■ Earth Matters — 17 February 2022 by Meteor Blades — SHORT TAKES section: pilot project will cover stretch of California canals with solar panels
■ peaksustainability.com Maintenance challenges would include cleaning and energy delivery/transmission. 19 February 2022
■ intelligentliving.co/ 11 benefits of solar panels on California water canals. 20 February 2022.
■ theconversation.com: Against build cost higher than for ground-based are the co-benefits of savings on land costs, water, aquatic weed mitigation and enhanced PV efficiency costing less across the life of the installations, even before factoring in the human & environmental health and climate benefits of solar itself. 22 Feb 2022
■ universityofcalifornia.edu The project is based on research commissioned by a company called Solar AquaGrid through the Sierra Nevada Research Institute and UC Water. 22 Feb 2022
Readers please do bring more links and information in the comments, as well as thoughts and ideas!
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Ivy Energy says its software can make rooftop solar work for multifamily housing, benefiting landlords and tenants alike. This is part of a series on the fight over the future of rooftop solar in California, including such as:
And for some humor meanwhile: <small>h/t MarcyKyle64</small>
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P.S. Having just exited bankruptcy and criminal probation with a license to burn, PG&E has started filing for rate hikes again…
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COMMENTER CONTRIBUTIONS & OTHER SITE FINDS:
<big>A Siegel
Second, perhaps worth pointing to more of the places around the world with solar over canals. For example, Guajarat, India.
Third, if you haven’t seen, LA Times’ Sammy Roth had a good piece summarizing the state of play about a year ago, [“Solar panels on California’s canals could save water and help fight climate change” — 22 April 2021]
Fourth, another potential benefit: running pumps directly from solar DC current rather than using inverters to move from DC to AC and then back to AC. About 20% of CA’s electricity is water related with perhaps 1/20th of that pumping. E.g., perhaps 1% of CA electricity use is pumping water around. Using the solar generated power, where appropriate, to directly power pumping can increase efficiency of this use.
...
Re the point on pumping, it isn’t ‘just’ the losses from T&D movement of the electrons but the losses from inverters (roughly 10% each direction … each, about 20% lost if the solar DC goes through an inverter to AC and then back to DC for powering a pump). If 1% of California’s power demand is pumping, if half that could be directly DC (solar or otherwise) powered, that would cut California’s electricity use by about 1/10th of 1%. Not a silver-bullet solution but an okay silver BB.</big>
ADDED 27 Dec 2022: New solar panel project over California canal could expand thousands of miles if successful — by April Siese, DK staff