DE-FOA-0001941-12E Rural Solar "Solar River CSSP Canal Spanning Solar Power"

Our farmers are economically stressed, a recent Department of Agriculture report plots out how land prices have steadily increased, almost tripling since 1990, yet farm cash income has turned volatile and recently sunk back down to 1990 numbers. This economic constriction puts immense pressure on our rural small landholders to increase economic output per acre. Solar power at small and medium scales must be deployable and not interfere with local agricultural production. By developing a system of deployable and price competitive solar racking systems, landowners will in turn have greater economic stability from multiple income sources while reducing energy price volatility risks. The proposed solution is to design a simple and flexible solar power racking system that spans irrigation canals in an affordable cost‐competitive way. The proposed system leverages pre‐owned and already utilized land, provides benefits of lowering evaporation, increased solar cell efficiency, along with making use of pre‐existing access roads usually along canals. The approach is to employ new technologies in adaptive structural design as a way of finding the absolute lightest, strongest, and cheapest structural solution. By having an installer and consumer‐friendly design that is robust yet light and cheap, the system can easily be installed in mass quantities over irrigation canals all across the Midwest and western states.