Native Americans have been using canals to irrigate the Gila River Valley for thousands of years, starting with the Huhugam people. Now at least a small slice of the modern-day system of canals that winds through the area will double as a location for generating solar energy for the Pima and Maricopa tribes.
Thousands of miles of federally owned canals stretch across the country, channeling water to thirsty crops, rural communities, and hydropower plants. Placing solar panels over these canals could create a gigawatt-scale source of clean energy with lower environmental impact than large-scale solar farms, but so far the idea has been slow to catch on.
A canal solar concept was deployed in India about a decade ago, and it inspired Ben Lepley, the founder of engineering firm Tectonicus, to create designs, prototypes, and techno-economic analysis for such a project in the U.S. Those plans have resulted in the soon-to-be-commissioned Casa Blanca installation — a 1.3 megawatt, half-mile-long pilot project located on the Casa Blanca Canal, part of an extensive canal network owned by the Gila River Indian Community.
The pilot received money from a $25 million provision of the Inflation Reduction Act that supplies funding for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to design, study, and deploy projects that put solar panels over waterways. Lepley’s firm has also won a Department of Energy Small Business Innovation Research Grant and is working with the California Energy Commission and University of California, Merced on the project.
It’s early days for this technology, but another canal installation, Project Nexus, in California’s Turlock Irrigation District, broke ground in May of this year and has already constructed foundations. Developers expect it to be completed in 2025.
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