A conceptual rendering of solar
canopies covering part of Turlock Irrigation District's 110-foot-wide
main canal, near Turlock, California. Credit: Turlock Irrigation
District
A project near Modesto, California, would
have the double benefit of saving water and generating renewable
energy.
The Turlock Irrigation District
announced this month that it is building solar
electricity-generating canopies over portions of the district’s canal
system, working in partnership with a Bay Area start-up, Solar
AquaGrid.
A series of canopies would cover more
than a mile of canals, going online by 2024 with solar panels that
would have a capacity of about 5 megawatts. By shading the sun, the
structures would reduce evaporation, leaving more water for the
district’s customers. And the cost, estimated at $20 million, is being
picked up by the state government.
This is the first demonstration project
by Solar AquaGrid, a company that sees the potential to install
similar canopies over thousands of miles of canals in California and
elsewhere.
Jordan Harris, the company’s CEO, told me
that the idea for Solar AquaGrid came from him noticing how California
canals were often in direct sunlight, while canals in France are often
shaded by canopies of trees.
Before I go on, some more about Harris:
He is not well-known in the energy industry, but he made a mark for
decades in the recording industry. He was a top executive at several
record companies, and co-founded Virgin Records America in 1986. The
label’s artists included Paula Abdul, Janet Jackson and Lenny Kravitz.
He also co-founded Rock the Vote in 1990, a campaign to get young
people to participate in the political process.
He was an environmental advocate during
his time in the record industry, and now focuses most of his time on
ventures related to the environment and clean energy. In 2005, he
co-founded
OZOcar, a chauffeured car service that uses eco-friendly vehicles.
He co-founded Solar AquaGrid in 2015.
“Given the conditions we’re experiencing
on this planet, it seems like we need some bold moves,” Harris said.
I’ve written before about the push to
build floating solar arrays that can produce electricity while
reducing evaporation from reservoirs. Solar canopies are different,
with panels that are suspended above the water instead of floating,
which allows for the water to flow underneath. And, solar canopies are
much less common than floating solar arrays.
Some of the only examples of solar
canopies are in India, where developers have completed projects in
Gujarat and
Punjab.
Solar AquaGrid looked closely at the
Gujarat project and spoke with the people who built it, Harris said.
He and his colleagues saw how the project’s steel-truss design was
heavy and limited access to the canals. Based on this, the Turlock
project uses a design with suspension cables, which are lighter than
trusses and allow for easy access to the canals.
To help show the potential for solar
canopies, Solar AquaGrid sponsored research by the University of
California, Merced. This led to a
peer-reviewed paper published last year in the journal Nature
Sustainability showing that the financial savings of reducing
evaporation from canals would be enough to cover the costs of the
canopies, and that there are additional benefits from generating
renewable energy.
The water savings would be, in percentage
terms, in the low single digits of the total water flowing in
California’s irrigation systems, but it would be enough to be
significant in a state where the demand for water far exceeds the
supply, said Roger Bales, an engineering professor at UC Merced and a
co-author of the paper.
“Where we build solar, and how we do it,
matters,” he said. “Just as I put solar on my roof instead of in my
backyard, I prefer to put it on top of other infrastructure like
parking lots and canals, as opposed to taking farmland out of
production or using natural lands that have biodiversity and ecosystem
value.”
Turlock Irrigation District is a
community-owned nonprofit that provides electricity and water to a
mostly rural region that includes the city of Turlock and parts of
Modesto. The district’s farmers depend on irrigation services to be
able to grow their crops.
Once this solar canopy project is built,
Solar AquaGrid and academic researchers will get a better idea of the
costs and the benefits and figure out how best to communicate about
them.
“Let’s start to develop new math and a
new model for how we value these systems,” said Robin Raj, the other
co-founder of Solar AquaGrid and the founder of The Citizen Group, a
marketing and branding firm.
He was attracted to the idea of solar canopies because of the dual
benefits of saving water and producing renewable energy, he said.
The project wades into the larger idea of the water-energy nexus,
which refers to the many ways that the water and energy systems are
mutually dependent. Thermal power plants—including coal, natural gas
and nuclear—need large quantities of water to operate, while systems
that process and deliver water need large quantities of electricity to
run.
I will be following this project, and will be looking for others
out there that marry water conservation with energy conservation.
Other stories about the energy transition
to take note of this week:
Contractors and Experts Weigh In
on the Hurdles to Electrifying a Home: With a growing push to
stop using natural gas and make homes all-electric, contractors and
customers have some practical concerns about costs, how to deal with a
boost in power demand and obtaining appliances that may not be easily
available. One major issue is that many homes’ electrical panels are
not configured to handle the higher amperage that’s often needed for
them to run solely on electricity, requiring additional spending by
the owners of those houses to upgrade their electrical systems.
Meanwhile, contractors that offer to replace gas furnaces can often
get it done more quickly and for a lower up-front cost, as
Jeff St. John reports for Canara Media. But the hassles of going
all-electric are often worth it; over time, an all-electric house will
have lower costs and better air quality.
Offshore Wind Is On Track to Hit
Biden’s 30 Gigawatt Target by 2030: Two reports issued this
month show that the U.S. offshore wind industry is poised for rapid
growth. S&P Global Market Intelligence reports that developers have
announced 30.7 gigawatts of offshore wind projects. The Business
Network of Offshore Wind, a trade group, reports that 17.5 gigawatts
of projects have already obtained financing, while New York, New
Jersey and Massachusetts have laws that would lead to development of
more than 45 gigawatts by 2040. The progress shown in the reports
shows that the Biden administration’s goal of building 30 gigawatts by
2030 is within reach, as
Emma Penrod reports for Utility Dive.
EV Maker Polestar Wants to
Produce a Truly Climate Neutral Car: Polestar, the
Sweden-based electric vehicle manufacturer, has announced agreements
with parts suppliers that are part of an attempt to use only
components that are made in processes with zero-carbon emissions or
emissions that can be offset in some way. The company says its goal is
to make a vehicle that is truly climate neutral, as
Rafaela Lindeberg reports for Bloomberg Green. “We are leveraging
innovation and collaboration to address the climate crisis,” said
Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar’s CEO, in a statement.
A High-Tech Twist on an Old
Process Could Clean Up Steel and Cement Making: A start-up is
developing a “heat battery” that industrial businesses may be able to
use to provide the high heat used to make steel and cement.
California-based Rondo Energy is developing a system that uses
renewable energy to heat up bricks similar to the bricks used in blast
furnaces. “Because it’s simple and boring, [the technology] can go to
a very large scale with economics driving it and attack a big
problem,” said John O’Donnell, the company’s CEO, in
an interview Justine Calma of The Verge. If the technology works,
it would provide companies with an option to replace processes that
now are done by burning coal and other fossil fuels.
ICN reporter Julie Margolin
contributed to this story.
Inside Clean Energy is ICN’s weekly bulletin of news and analysis
about the energy transition. Send news tips and questions to
dan.gearino@insideclimatenews.org.
