America's First Solar Panel-Covered Irrigation Canals Planned in California, Arizona (apnews.com) 53
In 2015 the founders of "Solar AquaGrid" proposed water-saving solar panels to shade irrigation canals, but they "couldn't get anyone to commit," remembers the Associated Press.
But "fast forward eight years," and you'll find them "preparing to break ground on the first solar-covered canal project in the United States." The idea is simple: install solar panels over canals in sunny, water-scarce regions where they reduce evaporation and make electricity. A study by the University of California, Merced gives a boost to the idea, estimating that 63 billion gallons of water could be saved by covering California's 4,000 miles of canals. Researchers believe that much installed solar would also generate a significant amount of electricity.
But that's an estimate — neither it, nor other potential benefits have been tested scientifically. That's about to change with Project Nexus in California's Central Valley...
They thought research from a reputable institution might do the trick, and [in 2021] got funding for UC Merced to study the impact of solar-covered-canals in California... Around the same time, the Turlock Irrigation District, an entity that also provides power, reached out to UC Merced. It was looking to build a solar project to comply with the state's increased goal of 100% renewable energy by 2045. But land was very expensive, so building atop existing infrastructure was appealing. Then there was the prospect that shade from panels might reduce weeds growing in the canals — a problem that costs this utility $1 million annually...
The state committed $20 million in public funds, turning the pilot into a three-party collaboration among the private, public and academic sectors. About 1.6 miles (2.6 kilometers) of canals between 20 and 110 feet wide will be covered with solar panels between five and 15 feet off the ground. The UC Merced team will study impacts ranging from evaporation to water quality, said Brandi McKuin, lead researcher on the study. "We need to get to the heart of those questions before we make any recommendations about how to do this more widely," she said.
"California isn't first with this technology," the article points out, since India "pioneered it on one of the largest irrigation projects in the world..." But soon even more U.S. canals may be getting solar panels.
Arizona's Gila River Indian Community "received funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to install solar on their canals in an effort to save water to ease stress on the Colorado River. And one of Arizona's largest water and power utilities, the Salt River Project, is studying the technology alongside Arizona State University. And a group of more than 100 climate advocacy groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace, have now sent a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Bureau Commissioner Camille Touton urging them "to accelerate the widespread deployment of solar photovoltaic energy systems" above the Bureau's canals and aqueducts. Covering all 8,000 miles of Bureau-owned canals and aqueducts could "generate over 25 gigawatts of renewable energy — enough to power nearly 20 million homes — and reduce water evaporation by tens of billions of gallons."
But "fast forward eight years," and you'll find them "preparing to break ground on the first solar-covered canal project in the United States." The idea is simple: install solar panels over canals in sunny, water-scarce regions where they reduce evaporation and make electricity. A study by the University of California, Merced gives a boost to the idea, estimating that 63 billion gallons of water could be saved by covering California's 4,000 miles of canals. Researchers believe that much installed solar would also generate a significant amount of electricity.
But that's an estimate — neither it, nor other potential benefits have been tested scientifically. That's about to change with Project Nexus in California's Central Valley...
They thought research from a reputable institution might do the trick, and [in 2021] got funding for UC Merced to study the impact of solar-covered-canals in California... Around the same time, the Turlock Irrigation District, an entity that also provides power, reached out to UC Merced. It was looking to build a solar project to comply with the state's increased goal of 100% renewable energy by 2045. But land was very expensive, so building atop existing infrastructure was appealing. Then there was the prospect that shade from panels might reduce weeds growing in the canals — a problem that costs this utility $1 million annually...
The state committed $20 million in public funds, turning the pilot into a three-party collaboration among the private, public and academic sectors. About 1.6 miles (2.6 kilometers) of canals between 20 and 110 feet wide will be covered with solar panels between five and 15 feet off the ground. The UC Merced team will study impacts ranging from evaporation to water quality, said Brandi McKuin, lead researcher on the study. "We need to get to the heart of those questions before we make any recommendations about how to do this more widely," she said.
"California isn't first with this technology," the article points out, since India "pioneered it on one of the largest irrigation projects in the world..." But soon even more U.S. canals may be getting solar panels.
Arizona's Gila River Indian Community "received funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to install solar on their canals in an effort to save water to ease stress on the Colorado River. And one of Arizona's largest water and power utilities, the Salt River Project, is studying the technology alongside Arizona State University. And a group of more than 100 climate advocacy groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace, have now sent a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Bureau Commissioner Camille Touton urging them "to accelerate the widespread deployment of solar photovoltaic energy systems" above the Bureau's canals and aqueducts. Covering all 8,000 miles of Bureau-owned canals and aqueducts could "generate over 25 gigawatts of renewable energy — enough to power nearly 20 million homes — and reduce water evaporation by tens of billions of gallons."
Win-win (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yep. I'm looking forward to seeing the results on this project.
It's a stupidly simple plan with lots of potential for good returns in multiple areas.
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Still worth doing, in my opinion, if they can keep the costs reasonable.
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If spread out evenly over all of California, 63 billion gallons of water amounts to less than 3/128" of rain.
This is completely irrelevant. The water is not needed evenly distributed across the state, and the water could not be distributed across the state, nor collected from across the state. What matters is whether it reaches Los Angeles, and this will help it continue to do that.
Puts us years behind Thailand (Score:4, Interesting)
It seemed an obvious thing to do. However, Thailand implemented a more difficult version of this already.
https://www.euronews.com/green... [euronews.com].
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Thailand implemented a more difficult version of this already. Huge floating solar farm puts Thailand on track towards carbon neutrality [euronews.com].
Maybe more difficult in some ways, but they didn't have to built support trusses for the panels, etc ... which would have been more difficult in their case as the panels are floating in a reservoir.
As long as the panels can (Score:3)
5 feet off the ground means that people will be climbing and jumping on it constantly. 15 feet could work but 20-25 on poles would be better. At that height, all you just need to deal with are people throwing rocks at it, which they will do constantly unless they install cameras and pass laws allowing painful fines.
Re:As long as the panels can (Score:4, Funny)
Are you saying there are clueless human-like individuals attempting to live in California that do questionable things?
Shirley you jest !
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What's the leaching potential of bad things into the water supply?
Re:As long as the panels can (Score:4, Informative)
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Skepticism (Score:4, Insightful)
I remain deeply skeptical of this approach. The problems that nag me are the cost of the structure required to support the panels across the canal, the ability to clean and service the installed panels, and the problem of transporting generated power from a relatively narrow strip of panels that's many miles long. The last issue means they'll have to use many small DC-to-AC inverters instead of a few long ones to manage the transmission losses.
I hope I'm wrong and it works spectacularly. The most difficult part of installing solar is the NIMBY issue, and I assume that's less of a problem over irrigation canals.
Re:Skepticism (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Skepticism (Score:4, Insightful)
This is CA. This is a partnership between a city, the state and a private org to spend gobs of cash.
It's entirely fair to question their competence, they've given us plenty of reason to, or have you missed the high speed rail that was supposed to connect SF to LA?
Re:Skepticism (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not even a question of competence. High visibility public works projects get inertia behind them that, coupled with the vagaries of government procurement requirements, make it extremely difficult to adapt to unknowns or oversights in requirements. Coupled with "sunk cost" logic and Politicians unwilling to take an L you can end up spending a lot of money unwisely.
I hope it works out; I really do. That said, I hope they pilot test, so they don't get in a situation where they have to do something crazy like custom build new heavy equipment to service the canals because "fit an excavator under the canopy" wasn't on the requirements list.
Re: Skepticism (Score:1, Funny)
Right, because California never started a project without thinking it thru! (High-Speed Rail)
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The most difficult part of installing solar is the NIMBY issue, and I assume that's less of a problem over irrigation canals.
This idea is gaining traction from all interested parties, including government, water managers, farmers, and utilities. Cost seems to the main concern. There's perhaps some concern about effectiveness, but this prototype will address that question. Is there another concern besides cost? There are no land issues. In the areas in California where this idea will be implemented, farmers hold huge political power, and those farmers would benefit from more water availability. The water managers get more wa
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The interesting thing is that solar panels do not cut out all the light so you can grow stuff underneath them. I think the bigger risk to this project is that the shelter means too much grows underneath.
Interestingly, if you have a canal, you could also put barges on it. You could turn the sunlight into hydrogen. You would have electricity, water and after production, you could float the product downstream on a barge.
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I assumed the channels are for irrigation? ... and probably not even 1 yard deep. ...
They hardly are wider than 2 yards
You would be better off to produce hydrogen at the point you get the water from
Re:Skepticism (Score:5, Informative)
they'll have to use many small DC-to-AC inverters instead of a few long ones to manage the transmission losses.
When I got solar panels, I got a system with Enphase microinverters. There is one microinverter per panel, plus one microinverter per battery module. My home has dozens of microinverters.
IMHO it's clearly the way to go for a project like this. If a tree limb starts casting shade on one part of the canal, you don't want a whole "string" of panels to all have their output drop. See the section "Efficiency in partial shade" in the below link.
https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-string-inverter-vs-microinverter [solarreviews.com]
Also, long runs of relatively low-voltage AC are safer than stringing together panels into a high-voltage DC run.
I'm not sure when the patents on microinverters will run out, but the first microinverters appeared in the 1990's so at least some of the patents must already be expired. IMHO microinverters really are a better technology, so once microinverters are free from patents (or at least free from the most important ones), I think they will become the standard for solar power.
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Microinverters tend to work best when you've got shaded or otherwise obstructed panels, different mixes of panels, blocks of panels facing in different directions due to roof orientation, and similar situations where string inverters don't work well.
Microinverters work great no matter where you use them. What you did wasn't give a list of places microinverters work well, but instead a list of places where other inverters don't. The biggest advantages of microinverters are 1) not needing enclosures for inverters and 2) being able to upgrade piecemeal later without thinking about string lengths etc. The one and only time anyone should use normal inverters is when they have a battery bank near the panels. In every other case, it makes more sense to use mi
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Also, long runs of relatively low-voltage AC are safer than stringing together panels into a high-voltage DC run.
Ya, because 12 foot diameter copper cables are cost effective. Please read up on Ohms law. There's a reason why transmission level power lines are over 100,000 volts. Microinverters only work when you're going over extremely small distances, like from your roof to your attached garage under your roof. If you're not space constrained, add one extra panel to get more power at a much lower cost using a centralized inverter. You'll also save money by running a lower gauge wire because of the higher voltage. All
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I'm not an electrical engineer, but I think you aren't making any sense here. Everything you said argues for AC power.
DC power is only good for long-distance transmission at crazy high voltages. DC is also okay for low-power, short-distance tasks. For all medium to long distance power transmission at non-crazy voltages, AC is the best choice. It's the whole reason why AC won over DC for our power infrastructure.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/mark-specht/the-current-war-why-did-westinghouse-ac-beat-edison-dc/ [ucsusa.org]
Ya
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The $180 Enphase inverters are generally considered decent microinverters.
A 400W panel is roughly about 4x8'. Stacked across the canal single file sideways would be 100W/foot. At 240V, that would be .42A per foot.
12 gauge Romex (commonly yellow jacketed) is rated for 10-20A.
This means your ordinary Romex can go 47.6 feet w/o a safety buffer.
A 1000 foot run would be 420 Amps. A single THHN 400 37 wire can handle 380A. It's .82 of an inch for each wire (Romex contains 3) and over a pound per foot. Using this
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This is from Bard. It got a decimal place wrong, 5143 inches is 130 Meters, not 1304 Meters. Regardless, my 12' claim is about 35x too generous for just 10 miles. I think the average canal would be a LOT longer than 10 miles.
Q: At 240V and 22,176A, how thick would wire need to be to go 10 miles
A: The wire thickness required to go 10 miles at 240V and 22,176A is 5143.67201113734 inches or 1304.7222053151 meters.
Here is the Python code I used to calculate the wire thickness:
Python
import math
def wire_thickness
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I think the average canal would be a LOT longer than 10 miles.
I guess this is the disconnect between your thinking and mine.
I'm not imagining that the microinverters would be enough to drive the power all the way to the end of the canal... I'm just imagining wire runs some reasonable distance to a backbone power distribution network that would involve transformers.
As little as I know, I'm still pretty sure you can't have one transformer per panel. You will need to have a few strategically-placed transforme
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The problems that nag me are the cost of the structure required to support the panels across the canal
It's no more expensive than a structure over a parking lot, which is already a successful model. For example, the luther burbank center (or whatever it's called right now since they like to rent out the name) has a solar-covered parking lot.
the ability to clean and service the installed panels
They can build a catwalk into the structure.
and the problem of transporting generated power from a relatively narrow strip of panels that's many miles long.
Why do you think that's a bigger problem than transporting power from a solar farm that's many miles away? It isn't, it's less of one.
The last issue means they'll have to use many small DC-to-AC inverters instead of a few long ones to manage the transmission losses.
Tell us you know nothing about solar farms without telling us. They now commonly use grid tie
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Obviously this is going to cost way more than building an equivalent solar farm, but you may be missing the point. The thing that is absolutely precious and irreplaceable here is the *water*. Run out of electricity and you get rolling brownouts, which is bad, obviously. But running out of water is a catastrophic crisis.
Unexpected problems? (Score:1)
As someone who lives in the north, I know first hand what too much shade can do. Moss. So I wonder what might start growing with plenty of fresh water nearby and plenty of shade.
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I got news for you; The lakes and reservoirs that serve major cities and small towns alike are teeming with life. Fish, birds, reptiles, insects, all sorts of plants. Sometimes people swim and ride motorboats in it.
The water is already treated before it gets to your faucet. A little moss or algae growing in the canal is the absolute least of concerns.
=Smidge=
Been there, done that.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder why this is hot news even. Identical deployments are found in multiple places around the world, with the one mentioned in the linked article from here in India, for example, being over a decade old.
Ref : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
They've also done this at scale, achieving identical objectives, and with great unit economics for the generated power. It also helps that many Indian irrigation canal systems are designed to pass through many villages along their run, so you don't really need to carry that generated power for very long before you can plug it into a grid point with load. The ground reality of the Indian solar project is quite different from way the linked article describes it, as being a failed project that bankrupted the company executing it. In fact, all the photographs used in the article are from the same Indian solar canal pilot... Go figure.
https://www.bbc.com/future/art... [bbc.com]
https://groundreport.in/solar-... [groundreport.in]
The truth is, multiple projects have started being deployed post the initial pilot, and SunEdison's bankruptcy is all about aggressive M & A shenanigans in the US markets. Way to downplay an idea originating elsewhere as not really done... Until we do it.
But hey, nothing is really done right until it is done in the West, especially in THE US of A.... ðY"
P.s. : great job in the summary, projecting it as an innovation breakthrough, and not at all pointing out that it is an evolution, not a revolution.
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great job in the summary, projecting it as an innovation breakthrough, and not at all pointing out that it is an evolution, not a revolution.
To me they acknowledge it quite well. TFS reads:
California isn't first with this technology," the article points out, since India "pioneered it on one of the largest irrigation projects in the world..."
It's news because it's still one very large project of this kind and the the first in a big country like USA. I also expect a news item when such a big project happens in EU. Currently in EU we have floating panels but relatively small projects only (and not on irrigation canals) https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
Good start (Score:3)
Every roof of every kind should be a solar panel.
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Re:Good start (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that "the grid would need upgrading" is pretty much a given for the future anyway. Our current grids are based on distribution of energy to many places from a few. In the future, they will be designed to distribute and store energy from many places going to many places.
Mostly possible to do technologically already. I think that the bigger problem will be re-inventing the economic and market systems that are currently used for electricity.
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the grid would need upgrading to deal with acess generation of an inremittent nature that is distributed.
Local generation takes load off of the grid. Adding more neighborhood generation means LESS need for grid improvements.
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the grid would need upgrading to deal with acess generation of an inremittent nature that is distributed.
Local generation takes load off of the grid. Adding more neighborhood generation means LESS need for grid improvements.
Not sure why this is marked down. I don't care if I'm feeding the grid, rather, I'd like to see the grid as my backup in case I can't generate enough power.
Don't combine them. (Score:1)
We don't lack for land. We have vast desert or just put it on people's roofs. So the space is there.
As to covering the canals, sure... do that. Make some simple concrete caps and we have low maintenance.
Don't combine them.
If you combine them then we have maintenance issues with flooding, corrosion, and its just harder to work on the panels when they're over water for no reason.
Further you have a strip of panels... literally easier to manage this in the typical grid pattern.
The state has an infinity of growi
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We don't lack for land.
Just because we have unused land, that doesn't mean it's the best place for anything. In fact, most of the unused land is unused because it isn't.
We have vast desert or just put it on people's roofs.
Desert is hot and remote and therefore a maintenance problem. Roofs are where most solar installers die (well, near them, anyway...)
As to covering the canals, sure... do that. Make some simple concrete caps and we have low maintenance.
Simple concrete caps for canals? hjahAHaHAHAHAH
If you combine them then we have maintenance issues with flooding, corrosion, and its just harder to work on the panels when they're over water for no reason.
It really isn't, if you just add a catwalk or two, and it also isn't for no reason.
Further you have a strip of panels... literally easier to manage this in the typical grid pattern.
It literally isn't, because microinverters.
The state has an infinity of growing financial liabilities and problems and... you think this is a good use of our dwindling resources? This is going back to mud huts if you people don't stop.
The planet won't support people living in mud huts if we don'
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1. Cool, so you concede the land issue is not a relevant justification.
2. The area around the canals is really just as hot as it goes right through the same desert. So you get no advantage there either.
3. Yep, concrete caps on the canals is easy... when we built these things in the 1920s and 1930s we did that sometime. Apparently you think we've lost this technology some how.
4. It is for no reason as 1~3 have demonstrated. Further, you're only making maintenance harder by doing it suspended over the canal.
Re: Don't combine them. (Score:2)
I concede nothing. Learn to read.
I'm getting sick and tired of the "first ever" (Score:2)
solar panel (Score:1)