Page - 161 - in Clean Water Using Solar and Wind - Outside the Power Grid

Land use for energy 161 The global share of rooftop PV systems is not known. In many countries there are no separate statistics for rooftop PV and utility-scale PV. World Energy Council (WEC, 2016, Table 7) reports that in only four major solar PV countries (Germany, Japan, the US and Australia) do the land savings as a result of rooftop installations exceed 200,000 acres or 85,000 hectares (=850 km2). Solar panels are used in innovative ways to save both land and water (see 8.3.4; WEC, 2016). In Japan the 13.7 MW Yamakura floating solar power station is composed of more than 50,000 solar modules, covering a water surface area of 180,000 m2 : or 76 MW/km2. They are mounted on the Yamakura Dam reservoir, located in the Chiba Prefecture east of Tokyo. The panels will reduce water evaporation from the dam as well as saving fertile land. The plant was put into full operation in March 2018. A similar structure is being developed in India . In the first stage of a solar panel project in the province of Gujarat in north-western India, a 750 m section of a water canal is covered with solar panels, generating 1 MW of electric power. Covering the canal with solar panels will save agricultural land as well as decreasing the water loss via evaporation (Shukla et  al., 2016). According to WEC (2016) the solar panels of this canal could save a lot of land, five acres per MW. This corresponds to a solar panel power of 50 MW/km2 (compare Chapter 8.2–8.3). Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/520710/wio9781780409443.pdf by IWA Publishing user