The California Solar Canal Initiative involves building the knowledge base and community will to accelerate the adoption of solar canal projects. Recognizing that not all miles are created equal, our team is actively exploring meaningful opportunities to bring solar canals to scale across stretches of California’s 4,000 miles of canals.
Solar AquaGrid, working together with our partners at USC Public Exchange, have assembled a stellar faculty from seven leading universities – with expertise in policy, law, economics, energy, hydrology, and environmental justice – to develop a decision-making framework and mapping tool to identify specific locations and community use cases across California that are ideally suited to solar canal systems.
The California Solar Canal Initiative (CSCI) research project aims to accelerate the deployment of solar canals across the state by equipping government agencies, utilities, community members and other interested parties with data on optimal locations and identifying willing host communities.
Solar Aquagrid leads the initiative in partnership with the University of Southern California (USC) Dornsife Public Exchange. CSCI researchers will closely collaborate with the state agencies responsible for water, land and energy: California Department of Water Resources (DWR), California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) and California Energy Commission (CEC).
CSCI researchers will evaluate solar canals’ potential to:
· Provide numerous benefits to communities where projects are developed
· Address the needs of a rapidly changing energy market
· Through co-benefits, be competitive with other distributed-solar projects
· Enhance current canal operations and maintenance procedures
· Navigate existing water and land regulations
USC Dornsife Public Exchange has assembled a multidisciplinary research team from faculty at seven universities: USC, UC Merced, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UC Law San Francisco, San Jose State University, and the University of Kansas.
“Aqueducts are the arteries of our economic and social development, and have captured the public’s imagination for centuries. We need to find every way we can to use water more efficiently, including stemming evaporative loss, as we also scale up clean energy to meet the needs of the challenging century ahead under climate change.”
– Felicia Marcus, Former Chair, California State Water Board