Some 8,000 miles of federally owned canals snake across the United States, channeling water to replenish crops, fuel hydropower plants and supply drinking water to rural communities. In the future, these narrow waterways could serve an additional role: as hubs of solar energy generation.
Continue reading on Canary Media
Back in 2015, California’s dry earth was crunching under a fourth year of drought. Then-Governor Jerry Brown ordered an unprecedented 25% reduction in home water use. Farmers, who use the most water, volunteered too to avoid deeper, mandatory cuts.
Brown also set a goal for the state to get half its energy from renewable sources, with climate change bearing down.
Continue reading on Spectrum News
Solar AquaGrid, the University of California Merced, Turlock Irrigation District, and the California Department of Water Resources are winners of the 2023 Gizmodo Science Fair for innovating a way to combine clean energy with water conservation.
Would covering California’s miles of canals with solar panels help save significant amounts of water from evaporation—and generate clean energy in the process?
Continue reading on Gizmodo
Water and power.
It is what drives economic prosperity.
That is why South San Joaquin Irrigation District that has spent the last 113 years securing, developing and protecting water supplies for Manteca Ripon, and Escalon is pursuing a three-prong strategy in a bid to harness the same water to generate lower cost “green” electricity.
Continue reading on Manteca Bulletin
In February pv magazine reported on Project Nexus, which planned to install solar panels over California canals. Now that project is about to move forward with groundbreaking planned for the fall.
The Turlock Irrigation District (TID) is partnering with the Department of Water Resource (DWR), Solar AquaGrid, and the University of California, Merced in the project funded by the State of California. The project will include energy storage to study how storage facilities can support the local electric grid when solar generation is lowered due to cloud cover.
Continue reading on pv magazine USA
CENTRAL VALLEY, Calif. – A pilot project has been funded to cover some of California’s irrigation canals with solar panels.
The Turlock Irrigation District’s “Project Nexus” is designed to as an “innovative, multi-benefit, water-energy nexus project that can further California’s push toward water and climate resiliency.
Continue reading on Action News Now
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.
Continue Reading on Denver7
