A district of India is working on a project that will save water and generate electricity. The concept is brutally simple. Cover water canals with solar panels.
I’m going to try and give an idea of what this will do, but I’m converting Rupees into dollars here and my numbers may not be exact.
The first phase of the project will cover 750 meters of water canal. It’s estimated that this alone will generate 16 megawatts of electricity annually and prevent nine million liters of water from evaporating from the canal per year. And that’s only 750 meters worth.
The main canal in the district is 458 kilometers long. Including branches, the length approaches 19,000 kilometers.
If the district (and business partners) only cover 10% of the entire network, they are estimating over 2 gigawatts of power per year and a water savings of 20 billion liters of water per year.
Since the district is heavily invested in solar power anyway, a further saving is the 11,000 acres of land that would have to be converted to solar panels to generate that same electricity.
Sounds like a good plan to me. Everyone wins.
