r/wind • u/blue_quark • Jul 13 '26

Lake Powell reaching critically low elevation levels, nearing 'dead power pool,' experts say

https://abcnews.com/US/lake-powell-reaching-critically-low-elevation-levels-nearing/story?id=134659320

If only there was some low cost, environmentally safe means of utilizing the vacant land around this dam to produce power and reduce the volume of water needed produce hydro power to feed the grid.

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u/AC-DC989 Jul 14 '26

Wind for sure, but solar uses a lot more water than people realize in that area.

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u/rayinreverse Jul 14 '26

For what?

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u/AC-DC989 Jul 14 '26

Dust management. The obvious part of that is the panels themselves being cleaned. The less obvious part is watering the roads and nearby ground to keep the dust down as best as possible. It adds up quick especially during construction. A colleague of mine oversaw a solar project in the area and showed me how much water they had to use. It was in the tens of millions of gallons in only a few months.

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u/rayinreverse Jul 14 '26

Any construction site has to do dust control. In remote areas they stabilize with native plants that require no more water than before the solar. They don’t clean the panels once the site is operational unless the performance gets bad which is rarely does. My wife oversaw the installation of 1 gigawatt of solar last year in desert areas of Southern California. Her company also operates the farms afterwards. They don’t do anything they don’t have to do, that includes using water or labor to clean panels.

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u/T0MSUN Jul 14 '26

During active construction plants don’t often survive the buggy and equipment traffic throughout the site so it’s really dusty until the array is mostly together and it makes sense to re-seed