This California Solar Project Shows What’s Possible — So Why Aren’t There More?

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“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

BENEFITS

Why Should We Care:

Project Nexus is important because it tests an innovative method to combat California’s linked challenges of drought and the need for clean energy by installing solar panels over canals, which can reduce water evaporation, generate substantial renewable power, create jobs, lower maintenance costs, and decrease fossil fuel use.

Dual-Purpose Technology:

The core idea is to cover existing irrigation canals with solar panels, creating a dual benefit of renewable energy generation and water conservation.

Water Conservation:

Covering canals prevents water evaporation, which can save billions of gallons of water annually in arid regions like California. The shade also helps keep the water cooler, which reduces algae growth that can impact water quality and canal maintenance.

Clean Energy Generation:

The project generates renewable electricity that can be used to power pumps and other irrigation equipment, reducing the reliance on fossil fuels.

A novel solar power project just went online in California’s Central Valley, with panels that span across canals in the vast agricultural region.

The 1.6-megawatt installation, called Project Nexus, was fully completed late last month. The $20 million state-funded pilot has turned stretches of the Turlock Irrigation District’s canals into hubs of clean electricity generation in a remote area where cotton, tomatoes, almonds, and hundreds of other crops are grown.

Project Nexus is only the second canal-based solar array to operate in the United States—and one of just a handful in the world. America’s first solar-canal project started producing power in October 2024 for the Pima and Maricopa tribes, together known as the Gila River Indian Community, on their reservation near Phoenix, Arizona. Two more channel-top arrays are already in the works there.

In California, the solar-canal system was built in two phases, with a 20-foot-wide stretch completed in March and a roughly 110-foot-wide portion finished at the end of August. Researchers will study the project’s performance over time, while a new initiative led by California universities and the company Solar Aquagrid will push to fast-track the deployment of solar canals across the state.

Proponents of this emerging approach say it can provide overlapping benefits. Early research suggests that, along with producing power in land-constrained areas, putting solar arrays above water can help keep panels cool, in turn improving their efficiency and electricity output. Shade from the panels can also prevent water loss through evaporation in drought-prone regions and can limit algae growth in waterways.

Plus, solar canals could offer a faster path to clean energy development than utility-scale solar farms, especially in rural parts of the US where big renewables projects increasingly face community opposition. Placing solar panels atop existing infrastructure doesn’t require altering the landscape, and the relatively small installations can be plugged into nearby distribution lines, avoiding the cumbersome process of connecting to the higher-voltage wires required for bigger undertakings.

“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.

The purpose of these early arrays is primarily to power on-site canal equipment like pumps and gates. But such projects could eventually help clean up the larger grid, too. A coalition of US environmental groups previously estimated that putting panels over 8,000 miles of federally owned canals and aqueducts could generate over 25 gigawatts of renewable energy—enough to power nearly 20 million homes—and reduce water evaporation by possibly tens of billions of gallons.