The Weber Basin Water Conservancy District plans to put solar panels over a quarter-mile stretch of the Layton Canal in West Haven. Monday, April 15, 2024.This story is part of The Salt Lake Tribune’s ongoing commitment to identify solutions to Utah’s biggest challenges through the work of the Innovation Lab.Clean energy and adequate water are among Utah’s biggest challenges, and a federally funded experiment will try to address both by placing solar panels over a northern Utah canal.
The project will generate about one and a half megawatts of clean energy that will be used by the district to run pump stations. Any excess will go to the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a consortium of public power systems that includes the water district. , which includes several miles of solar panels on a canal in the San Joaquin Valley in central California., which supplies water to farmers in the Deschutes River basin of Oregon.
He expects it will be fall of 2025 before the project is operational. The district still has to sign a contract with the federal Bureau of Reclamation.