Gujarat canal-top solar generates power while saving 2.38M gallons of water

When it comes to solar panels, they are usually spread across rooftops or open fields where they serve more purposes than just providing energy. But near Chandrasan village in the western Indian state of Gujarat, a roughly 2,460-foot ribbon of panels sits above moving irrigation water, turning an existing canal into both a power site and a shade structure.A solar plant on the waterThe Gujarat State Electricity Corporation developed the canal-top plant with support from Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam, the public company that owns and maintains the canal network. Commissioned in 2012, the installation placed solar equipment on an elevated steel structure spanning about 0.47 miles of a branch canal.A conventional utility-scale solar project usually needs a large, unobstructed plot. But this project used the airspace over infrastructure that was already public, so no crop rows had to disappear beneath the panels and no separate parcel had to be acquired for the array. This detail is vital for the region that depends on both land and water.Preserving waterThe solar panels block part of the intense sunlight that would otherwise strike the canal throughout the day. According to the official...