Californian power authorities have finished their first solar panel-covered canal project, that will generate 1.6 megawatts.

Overseen and built by and for the Turlock Irrigation District Water & Power overtop a curved section near the town of Hickman, the canal helps irrigate cotton, tomatoes, almonds, and other crops in California’s central valley.

The decision to install the panels was influenced by a landmark 2021 research paper, where scientists at Univ. of California Santa Cruz crunched the numbers and figured that the panels would save 63.5 billion gallons of water from evaporation annually by shading the flowing water.

It also found that for every megawatt of solar energy generated during Turlock’s 290 days of average sunshine, the pairing of panels over canals could replace 15-20 diesel generators used to pump water along the canals.

Called Project Nexus, the work began in October 2022 with funding of $20 million from the state’s coffers.

One of only a handful of arrays worldwide to be mounted over canals, and just the second in the US, Project Nexus will be monitored overtime to see how well the performance matches the earlier estimates.

The first canal-panel combo was installed last October on the Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation near Phoenix, Arizona.

“Why disturb land that has sacred value when we could just put the solar panels over a canal and generate more efficient power?” said David DeJong, director of the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project, which is developing a water-delivery system for the Gila River Indian Community.

Along with preventing evaporation, reducing the land clearance needed for solar farms, and boosting the state’s green energy output, the canal-mounted panels are believed to benefit from longer functional lifespans, as the water underneath keeps the panels’ undersides cooler.

Yet further, without direct sunlight, harmful algae will not grow along the canals, removing the need to clear it by hand or with chemicals.

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This idea actually began in the Indian state of Gujarat in 2014, when a pilot project covering 750 meters of canal space led to the creation of an entire canal-topped solar plant in Vadodara District, and another one totaling 100 megawatts off the Narmada River.