On April 5, 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom of California announced with much fanfare the plan to cover the state’s irrigation canals with solar panels to provide electricity for residents and prevent the evaporation of water in these canals. [emphasis, links added]
It sounds like a great idea. But is it?
This technology has actually been discussed for almost ten years.
Over 100 climate activist organizations such as Greenpeace and the Center for Biological Diversity urged Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Bureau Commissioner Camille Touton “to accelerate the widespread deployment of solar photovoltaic energy systems” above the Bureau’s canals and aqueducts.
They claimed that if all 4,000 miles of Bureau-owned canals and aqueducts were covered by solar panels, more than 25 gigawatts of renewable energy could be produced.
A great advantage, they said, would be to reduce the evaporation of tens of billions of gallons of water. Of course, that number is just a projection. Whether these benefits will materialize remains to be seen.
The government provided funding for UC Merced to study the impact of solar-covered canals in California.
The companies that will build these, Solar Aqua Grid and its partners are preparing to break ground on the first solar-covered canal project – called Project Nexus – in the United States.
“How much are we losing to evaporation?” asked Jordan Harris, CEO of Solar Aqua Grid, “It’s just common sense in our eyes.”
This action is starting as a pilot project for which California committed $20 million in public funds, received through the Inflation Reduction Act.
To start with, about 1.6 miles of canals between 20 and 110 feet wide will be covered with solar panels between five and 15 feet off the ground.
India actually pioneered this technology in 2012, promising to cover one of the largest irrigation projects in the world with solar panels.
The Sardar Sarovar dam and canal project was constructed to provide electricity and water for rural western India, a desert region.
This dam, one of the world’s largest, is a great source of electrical energy in India. Due to its desert location, when the Global Horizontal Solar Irradiance (GHI) is at a peak, a great deal of water is lost through evaporation.
By covering the still water area with solar panels, it was thought that the evaporation rate could be slowed down, increasing the dam’s output.
This photovoltaic project was acclaimed as a way to save water and provide additional electricity. But it turned out to be much more expensive than ever imagined.
Sun Edison, the engineering company involved with this project, promised residents of the area 11,800 miles of solar canals.
But instead, Sun Edison constructed just a few small solar projects and then filed for bankruptcy.
None of these have been deployed at scale.
“The capital costs are really high, and maintenance is an issue,” explained Jaydip Parmar an engineer in Gujarat who has been supervising similar solar canal projects in India. He concluded that it would make more economic sense to build them on the ground, where construction is simpler.
Awkward and unwieldy design is another reason the technology hasn’t been widely adopted in India. The panels in Gujarat’s pilot project sit directly over the canal, limiting access for maintenance and emergency crews.
One drawback here is that floating solar technology currently costs more to develop than land-based solar. The racking system, which keeps the solar panels afloat, also needs to be corrosion resistant with a long lifespan.
Solar photovoltaic panels lose productivity over time. Another problem is the immense amount of waste that has been accruing all over the world, due to the fact that the average lifetime of solar panels is less than ten years.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, by the end of 2016, there were already about 250,000 metric tons of solar panel waste in existence. This figure could grow to about 78 million metric tons by 2050.
This is extremely concerning.
Solar panels contain lead, which damages the nervous system, cadmium and chromium – known carcinogens – and other toxic chemicals that can leach out into the environment over time.
These toxic materials cannot be removed without breaking the entire panel apart. So it is not recommended that they be disposed of in regular landfills.
Approximately 90 percent of most photovoltaic modules consist of glass containing impurities such as plastics, lead, cadmium and antimony.
When these modules break, the toxic materials they contain can leach into the soil, causing problems with drinking water.
Over a period of time these substances will find their way into the bodies of water over which they are built, or on which they are floating. Even intact solar panels can release toxic substances through the action of rainwater.
Although we’ve been told that solar panels can be recycled, manufacturers admit that the cost of recycling is generally greater than the actual value of the material recovered. Therefore, users are doing anything they can to avoid recycling these panels.
California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) held a meeting with representatives of the solar industry to discuss the disposal issue.
These representatives and DTSC acknowledged that it would be difficult to determine whether a used solar panel should be classified as hazardous waste.(!)
The DTSC has considered building a database where solar panels and their toxicity could be tracked by their model numbers. However, it isn’t clear whether DTSC will implement such a database.
With roughly twice as many solar panels as the United States, China also has no plan for the disposal of old panels. Only the European Union and the state of Washington have laws requiring the correct disposal of worn out photovoltaic cells.
And of course hailstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes can damage solar panels.
In 2015, a tornado broke 200,000 solar modules at southern California’s solar farm Desert Sunlight. And it is only a matter of time before an earthquake damages solar installations being built in California.
A large solar farm in Puerto Rico, which generated 40 percent of the island’s electricity, was severely damaged during Hurricane Maria.
The 100,000 pounds of cadmium contained in 1.8 million solar panels to be constructed in a large 6,350 acre solar farm in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, caused citizens there to worry about the possibility of leaching and incorrect disposal.
Solar photovoltaic energy is not as environmentally conscious a choice as many think it is.
Besides being an intermittent and more expensive source of energy than traditional technologies, it has serious waste disposal issues that few countries are doing anything about.
The state of California evidently has many more lessons to learn.
Top image via Action News Now/YouTube screencap
Hundreds of fascinating facts about the climate change scam can be found in Lynne Balzer’s richly illustrated book, Exposing the Great Climate Change Lie, available on Amazon.
Governor Nuisance still being a total Dunderhead just like Biden I would say like Birds of aa Feather but Loons, Cuckoos and Turkeys are far more intelligent the Dumb-O-Crats