While solar farms are a great source of green energy, many people don’t like the fact that they occupy land which could otherwise be utilized for agriculture or housing. A new project is exploring an alternative, by placing solar panels over canals that will benefit from the shade.

Known as Project Nexus, the US effort is a collaboration between the University of California-Merced, California’s Turlock Irrigation District, the California Department of Water Resources, and Solar Aquagrid – the latter San Francisco Bay-area company commissioned the research, and is overseeing the project.

The basic idea is that instead of placing arrays of photovoltaic panels on land that could be used for other purposes, those panels will instead be installed over lengths of existing irrigation canals. Not only is that space not really usable for much else, but the shading effect of the panels should significantly reduce evaporation and weed growth in the water.

As an added bonus, it is believed that the cooling effect of the water will help keep the panels from overheating, allowing them to operate more efficiently.

Plans call for a total of 8,500 feet (2,591 m) of solar panels to be built over three sections of the Turlock Irrigation District’s canals in California’s Central Vally, starting this Fall and ending in late 2024. The different canal sections range in width from 20 to 100 feet (6 to 30.5 m).

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