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Saturday, March 26th, 2022

California’s ‘Solar Canals’ Will Save Water and Produce Clean Energy

Author:     Eduardo Garcia
Source:     Treehugger
Publication Date:     March 17, 2022 | 03:54PM EDT
 Link: California’s ‘Solar Canals’ Will Save Water and Produce Clean Energy
Stephan:   To anyone who has seen the canals in California this is such an obvious solution to several problems -- loss of water, increasing solar power -- that it is surprising such a project was not undertaken some years ago. But now it has begun and that is very good news.
Conceptual rendering of solar panels spanning the 110 foot-wide TID Main Canal
Conceptual rendering of solar panels spanning the 110 foot-wide TID Main Canal. Turlock Irrigation District

A public-private-academic partnership plans to install solar panels over water canals in California in a bid to produce clean energy and help preserve the state’s dwindling water resources. 

Construction of Project Nexus, the “first-ever solar panel over canal development in the United States,” will start next fall and is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2023. The 5-megawatt project will consist of three sites along canals in central California with widths ranging from 20 feet to 100 feet. 

If the pilot project proves solar canopies are a cost-effective way to produce clean energy and save water, scores of similar installations could be built atop California’s canal network—one of the world’s largest water distribution systems.

“This is a really exciting project,” California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said last month. “It connects our efforts in California to improve water conservation and build drought resilience with the clean energy transition we’re driving across California.”

Project Nexus was inspired by 

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2 Comments

  1. Rev. Dean on Saturday, March 26, 2022 at 8:29 am

    I lived in Florida for 17 years and think they should replicate this type of solar usage because they also have canals coming from Lake the large lake in north-central Florida.

  2. Wilma Bodrak on Saturday, March 26, 2022 at 10:33 am

    Haven’t you written about the downsides of solar power? The mining, the lack of recyclables, etc…it does not seem possible to have it both ways.