Pilot project to test the benefits and problems of solar panels covering canals

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Stretches of irrigation canals in Central California are about to get a bit of a facelift.

“We serve 150,000 acres with irrigation,” Josh Weimer, the external affairs manager with Turlock Irrigation District, said.

Weimer is part of a first-in-the-nation project that’s coming to life.

“We already own these 250 miles of canals, so the idea of using existing land that we own to minimize the cost of the overall project is something we’re very interested in,” he said.

“We expected that the benefits would be water savings by reducing evaporation and renewable energy produced, but there are other benefits,” Brandi McKuin, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said. She and her team said they have scientific proof of the benefits to us all.

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