Ryan Randazzo, Arizona Republic
Arizona utilities have long rejected covering canals with solar panels. Here’s why that may change
By Ryan Randazzo || The Arizona Republic
Arizona residents often suggest — to their utilities, the media, their neighbors — that the canals that deliver water from the Salt and Colorado rivers to the big cities ought to get covered with solar panels.
The idea just seems like a natural fit for a place with nearly 300 days a year of sunshine and crisscrossed by wide, uncovered canals carrying precious water that can evaporate under the hot sun.
Utilities have mostly balked at the idea, saying that coverings of any kind on the canals would hinder maintenance on the ditches, and that solar is cheaper and easier to build over solid land. First responders also regularly need to get in those waterways to rescue people and animals.
Salt River Project, which operates most of the canals in metro Phoenix, also has shared concern over installing expensive and potentially dangerous power-generating equipment along canals that are open to the public. Most large solar plants are fenced off.
But the tide might be shifting. The public utility is partnering with Arizona State University to collect data from two sites along its canals to determine how much electricity they might generate and how much evaporation installing solar panels over the water might prevent.
