Potential seen in floating solar for wine, ag

Gary Quackenbush, NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL
Sonoma County clean energy and water officials have set up talks with vineyard, farm, dairy and other landowners in Sonoma Valley and around Healdsburg about using their irrigation ponds for what is said to be the largest floating solar-electricity project in the U.S. and the second-largest in the world.
Sonoma Clean Power and Sonoma County Water Agency plan to hold additional information sessions throughout the county over the next three months to assess landowner interest in adopting a solar-over-water option. This comes after Sonoma Clean Power signed an agreement with San Francisco-based Pristine Sun in late February to install a 12.5-megawatt solar farm on pontoon docks at six holding ponds operated by the water agency in northwest Santa Rosa and Sonoma Valley. The power agency had reviewed bids from four solar providers.
The sunset of rooftop solar is not over the horizon, but the dawn of a new application for photovoltaic panels installed as floating arrays is an emerging trend in the industry. Some have already been placed above vineyard irrigation and frost prevention ponds as well as on fully treated wastewater reservoirs. The largest floating solar array in the world is a 13.4-megawatt installation by Kyocera TCL Solar on Yamakura Dam reservoir near Tokyo.
Read more via Potential seen in floating solar for wine, ag – North Bay Business Journal – North San Francisco Bay Area, Sonoma, Marin, Napa counties – Archive.

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