With much of Arizona in moderate to extreme drought, the Gila River Indian Community has signed an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin a solar canal project designed to reduce evaporation and increase solar efficiency.A similar project planned in California has not yet begun, making the $6.74 million project the first of its kind to begin construction in the United States. The goal of the first phase is to construct solar photovoltaic awnings spanning approximately 1,000 feet (305 meters) of the 1-10 LevelTop canal.
This simple idea can have huge benefits. Not only will the solar panels provide up to one megawatt of power to the Gila River Indian Community, they will also provide shade for the water below, helping to maintain the ability of the canal water to flow rather than allowing the desert heat to evaporate. From a solar farm perspective, costs should be much lower as there is no need to acquire land.
In addition, the water helps cool the panels, increasing their efficiency and increasing power generation by about 3%, Professor Roger Bales noted in a 2022 article about the California project for The Conversation. In a study published in 2021, Bales and his team argued that "covering all 4,000 miles of canals in California with solar panels would save more than 65 billion gallons of water annually by reducing evaporation" while generating up to 13 gigawatts of renewable energy in a distributed manner, thereby reducing transmission losses.
The new project in Arizona is scheduled to be completed in 2025.
"This kind of creative thinking helps us all move toward a more sustainable future," said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. "Leveraging existing infrastructure, like flat-top canals, to help provide sustainable, reliable energy - and doing so as part of a partnership like this - kills multiple birds with one stone."
While this will be the first project of its kind in the United States, similar projects have been built overseas. The canal solar power project in the Indian state of Gujarat began in 2012, and by 2015 it had a megawatt-scale pilot project completed and operational covering an approximately 750-meter (2,460-foot) section of the canal.
But SunEdison, the renewable energy company responsible for the project, filed for bankruptcy in 2016. The Solar Canal project was certainly not primarily responsible for the company's woes, which at the time described itself as the world's largest renewable energy company and had many other businesses. But the dismal financial situation has doomed any expansion plans for the canal solar power project.
Hopefully the projects in Arizona and California will have better results.