It’s no secret that California, and much of the American West, is facing significant water issues as precipitation becomes harder to come by and the weather gets hotter. It’s also no secret that PG&E, the electric utility serving much of the state, has faced its own problems as well, hiking up energy prices and proving unreliable.
Sometimes the answer to multiple problems is a single solution. On the Santa Lucia Preserve in Carmel Valley, CA, a new project is slated to solve persistent water and energy issues, while helping to make this land preserve a self-sustaining organism into the future.
The preserve, a 20,000-acre expanse of rolling chaparral hills, is preparing to debut a nearly 1,200 panel solar array, floating on a pond of treated wastewater the preserve uses to irrigate the property’s golf course. The solar array will help power the water pumping station that irrigates the golf course, and will provide crucial shade over the pond that will help save millions of gallons of water annually to evaporation.
The power output will be 487 kilowatts, able to subsidize 80% of the water pumping energy demand and the shelf life of the project is estimated to last 25-30 years.
There has been a lot of discussion about the environmental impact of solar farms. The impact of sourcing the materials, the impact on the earth when installing these farms, typically on open land. Forrest Arthur, manager at the preserve, had to solve this problem if the preserve was ever going to get solar, since a key principle of the preserve is impact development that is “subservient” to the land.
Not only is this floating solar, but it is floating on treated wastewater, used to irrigate the preserve’s golf course (ironic that a land preserve would have a golf course, but it was there before the land became officially a preserve).The pond is man-made and lined, and attracts no wildlife activity that would be impacted by these floating arrays.
Man-made reservoirs are everywhere. Treated wastewater reservoirs are becoming more common as water becomes a more precious resource and wastewater needs to be reused where possible. Evaporation will continue to be the unsexy issue of open air water reservoirs. It feels like floating solar arrays could be revelatory in the future