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  • Hacker News
  • > Even though the canal is fenced in, “we have instances where we have cars go into the canal — we’ll have people go into the canal, and animals go into the canal,” Allen said, describing some of the challenges they faced as an urban water district.

    >“What Turlock is doing with their projects is very impressive, but we have a different-looking canal system going through our service area,” Allen said. They are looking to put their canals into pipes to avoid evaporation, instead.

    Umm, if you can completely enclose it in a pipe then why in the heck couldn't you put an 8-10' tall roof over it?

    Typical local government (and I worked for one): "We didn't do it that way when I got here and it sounds like a lot of work and will be a change so let's rationalize doing nothing"

    by happyopossum
  • > In an effort to limit warming poised to dry out the state, California pledged to shift to 100% clean electricity by 2045.

    Well moving to sustainable energy is good, but California being on 100% clean electricity won't have any measurable effect on its warming.

    by misja111
  • "Sorry, you have been blocked"

    Well I guess I won't be reading your article then.

    The way so many web sites are now banning whole parts of the world is killing the Internet.

    by marticode
  • >>The state currently generates 62% of its electricity from renewable and zero-carbon sources, with the largest percentage of that coming from solar

    62% is pretty respectable for the size of California (same electricity consumption as Spain). I did not know this.

    by prometheus1992
  • The idea of covering irrigation canals has been around probably for thousands of years. Only recently I have seen this being done in Xinjiang in towns right next to the desert. The canals which have river water often flow under streets and through little caves and such, enabling them to grow grapes and such. The grapes are then also providing shade on paths and roads.
    by zelphirkalt
  • $20M for 1.7MW of capacity. Over $10 per watt. Recent utility scale installations in California are more like $1/W.

    There'd be some cost reduction from scaling up, but 10x is a huge gap to close. This is a waste of money.

    by sagarm
  • > Harris said he spent a lot of his life in France, where he noticed how trees lined the canals and protected their precious water from the wind and sun

    So why not plant the trees?

    by ShinyLeftPad
  • It seems like it would be more effective to simply put all the solar panels in a field, and construct a cheap shade over the entire canal no? The supports in the picture are massive and don't look cheap. Also I would imagine the solar array uses more copper than a similar capacity array just built in a field. You can't daisy chain multiple miles of solar panels together, so you need an extra power line to run alongside the whole thing.

    Put the solar panels in a field: The solar array uses less copper. The shade supports don't have to hold up solar panels: Shade supports cost less.

    The best reasoning they give is that California has insane permitting requirements, and it takes 1/6 the time to build on developed land compared to undeveloped land.

    by nbf_1995

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