Solar on canals reduces water evaporation by 70% and algae growth by 85%

pingou

Seems promising but it would have been nice to have some figures and the estimated cost at scale (or even just costs for the prototype).

cowthulhu

Unfortunately I suspect this idea is somewhat dead-on-arrival… anti-renewable people will fight it for obvious reasons, while environmentalists will fight it due to concerns over shading the waterways.

deskamess

Reducing algae growth makes sense for canals. Would this be a desirable outcome if we were placing panels on, say, a body of water behind a dam (at a safe distance, and contained). Are there ecological impacts of reducing algae growth?

xhkkffbf

Why do we arch the panels over the water? I've heard some say they need to send boats down the canal for maintenance. Okay. But why not just have lower panels that can be lifted in case of trouble? They're less likely to get blown around by wind and that should make them cheaper to build. And they could reduce evaporation and algae even more.

malshe

Isn’t this well known at this point? This 2020 article reports on solar installations on canals in Gujarat, India. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200803-the-solar-canals...

hyperman1

I've been vaguely wondering lately: The climate crisis is solar energy getting trapped on the planet instead of radiating into space. Solar panels convert light to electricity to ultimately mostly heat, instead of reflecting it to space. So it also traps energy on our planet. How big is the impact of this? Right now, it is probably ignorable, but will there be a theoretical point where solar itself becomes a climate crisis?