A rendering of a solar-covered canal shows what Project Nexus could look like. Image by Solar AquaGrid.In Season 6 of arcCA DIGEST, “Materials,” we reported on research in building-integrated photovoltaics being led by Professor Sarah Kurtz of the Materials and Biomaterials Science and Engineering graduate group at UC Merced. Recently, UC Merced graduate student Brandi McKuin completed a research project that demonstrated that covering the 4,000 miles of California’s water canals with photovoltaics could save 63 billion gallons of water per year through reduced evaporation, while generating 13 gigawatts of power. McKuin, who has since been a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz, is returning to UC Merced to work with Prof. Kurtz on the next phase of what has been dubbed Project Nexus, evaluating key performance indicators and matching design variants to particular segments of the canal system.
Read more about the project here.
