The decision was influenced by a landmark 2021 research paper, where scientists at Univ. of California Santa Cruz crunched the numbers and figured that the panels would save 63.5 billion gallons of water from evaporation annually by shading the flowing water.

Turlock Irrigation District Water & Power is preparing two pilot canal projects: a 500-foot (152-meter) curved canal section near the town of Hickman, and a second mile-long (1.6-km long) straightaway in nearby Ceres.

GNN reported last year that the UC Santa Cruz investigation found that for every megawatt of solar energy generated during Turlock's 290 days of average sunshine, the pairing of panels over canals could replace 15-20 diesel generators used to pump water along the canals.