I didn't search my post history, I just used the search box, but since that never seems to work I copied and pasted "solar canals" into the address bar and added "site:" before ecomodder.com, deleting the rest of the URL.
I didn't see it, so here you go:
How "solar canals" could help California reach sustainable energy goals
The canals in the Phoenix area started by the 1400s, are 180 miles long, more than twice as many miles as in Venice or Amsterdam combined, World War II prisoners dug canals, and some of these diggers dug out of the POW camp, but didn't account for dry river beds--they planned on floating to Mexico.
People swam in them before the 1950s, when swimming pools and air conditioning became more common. Salt River Project transformed the waterways to make them more efficient, and they banned swimming in the canals as it was now dangerous.
There were plants and trees along the canals, like cottonwoods, but they cut those down because cottonwoods used water, and they put in paths for maintenance of the canals and power lines.
In the mid-1990s SRP put white amur, a carp from China, in the canals, and they "can eat nearly three-quarters of its weight in weeds and algae a day."
They are finally supposed to upgrade the canals, but that is continually delayed.
Lifeblood of Phoenix: 7 things to know about canals The entire canal system is "336 miles from Lake Havasu City [the western border] to Tucson." On average, the canal is 80 feet across in the beginning.
What is the average size?
Does it taper down to 1, 10, or 20 feet?
I cannot find any information on where it ends, nor could I find a canal in Tucson to follow it to its end, but say it tapers down to nothing, which wouldn't make any sense, the average would be 40 feet, totaling 70,963,200 square feet of free real estate.
How much power could that provide--when it is sunny?
It is often sunny in Arizona.
"How much water is lost through evaporation? [A]pproximately 4.5 percent, or 16,000 acre feet from the aqueduct and 50,000 acre feet from Lake Pleasant."
I am not suggesting solar lakes.
Are you, freebeard?
"Why isn't the aqueduct covered? The Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) [...] found the cost to be prohibitive. Covering the canal would have quadrupled the $4 billion the project originally cost."
Frequently-asked questions
People are going to build solar panels somewhere and SRP is both the power company in the valley and the water company, so they can just build panels over the canals, and reduce that 4.5%.