In 2021, Campbell published another paper based on the same principle: If California spanned 4,000 miles of its canal system with panels, it would save 63 billion gallons of water from evaporation each year and provide half the new clean energy capacity the state needs to reach its decarbonization goals.
Because the US has so many reservoirs—some 26,000 in varying sizes, totaling 25,000 square miles of water—it would especially benefit from wide-scale floatovoltaics, the new study finds. If the country covered 30 percent of its reservoir area with floating panels, it could generate 1,900 terawatt hours of energy—about a fifth of the potential global total—while saving 5.5 trillion gallons of water
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