In 2021, Campbell published another paper based on the same principles. If California paneled her 4,000-mile canal system, 63 billion gallons of water would be saved from evaporation each year, providing half of the new clean energy capacity the state needs to reach. its decarbonization goal.
A new study finds that the United States has so many reservoirs (approximately 26,000 of various sizes, totaling 25,000 square miles of water) that it will particularly benefit from large-scale floating power generation. If a country covered 30% of its reservoirs with floating panels, it could generate 1,900 terawatt-hours of energy while saving 5.5 trillion gallons of water annually.
China can manage 1,100 terawatt hours per year, followed by Brazil and India with 865 and 766 respectively. Egypt can deploy 100 square miles of floating generators to generate 66 terawatt-hours of electricity while saving over 200 billion gallons of water annually.
The study also found that 40 developing economies, including Zimbabwe, Myanmar and Sudan, have more hydropower capacity than their current energy needs. (However, as they develop, their energy demand increases.)
Another advantage of floating power is that many reservoirs are equipped with hydroelectric dams. As such, the electrical infrastructure is already in place to bring solar power to the city. Zhenzhong Zeng of the Southern University of Science and Technology of China, co-author of the new paper, says the two power sources complement each other. “The intermittency of solar energy is one of the main obstacles to its development. Hydropower, which tends to be controlled, can make up for the shortfall at night when solar power does not work,” Zeng said. say. “Additionally, it can be combined with wind power, which usually complements solar power.”
Conserving water will become increasingly important as climate change exacerbates droughts, such as the historic droughts that have hit western states. However, even if the water level in the reservoir drops significantly and hydropower begins to decline, it will still generate electricity. (However, in remote reservoirs without a hydroelectric system, solar panels must be connected to a larger grid, increasing costs.)
Floating power can also work well with microgrids, says Sika Gadzanku, an energy technology and policy researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. These are disconnected from the massive grid and use solar power to recharge their batteries. For example, it can power a building at night. “If you had a huge pond in a remote area, deploying floating power might be similar to applying solar and battery projects to other remote areas,” says Gazank. I reviewed it.
It could also benefit smaller communities in other ways, Gazank said. Installing a floating system in a local pond saves water and can be cheaper than connecting remote areas to a larger grid. “Grid expansion is very expensive,” she says.
Placing panels over canals and reservoirs takes advantage of spaces already man-made and eliminates the need to clear additional land for huge solar farms. (Hydropower can also be deployed in polluted bodies of water, such as industrial ponds.) “For the same capacity, solar power requires about 70 times more land than natural gas plants.” says Brandi McKinn, an environmental engineer at the University of California. , Merced, who co-authored the Campbell and Canal papers, but was not involved in this new work. “These solutions using the built environment should be considered if we are to meet ambitious climate targets while protecting biodiversity.”
In recent years, floating power has moved from small projects to vast solar farms, such as Singapore’s Tenge Reservoir, where panels occupy an area the size of 45 football fields. As systems expand, “additional research is really needed on some of the potential impacts, thinking about these aquatic ecosystems,” says Gadzanku. Or the panels may cause problems for local waterfowl and migratory birds that use the reservoir as a pit stop. For example, it may help determine if there is optimal spacing of the panels to allow the species to move freely through the water.
While these projects alone cannot power an entire metropolis, they will help diversify generation and make grids more resilient as the renewable energy revolution accelerates. “Energy is such a big problem. There’s no silver bullet,” he says Campbell. “We need floating solar and about 100 other things to meet our energy needs.”
