Solar River Pilot on the Casa Blanca Canal

This pilot project on the Casa Blanca canal is the first of it’s kind in the Americas. Tectonicus started research on this idea in 2015 after seeing an article of a similar project being built in Gujurat, India.

The project is owned and developed by the Gila River Indian Community for tribal power needs and to meet their sustainability goals. For many years the community had wanted to switch over to carbon free clean electricity, but had repeatedly rejected the negative impacts that utility-scale solar projects would have on their sacred lands. This design allowed the tribe to build out their own utility-scale solar energy plant without the cultural or environmental sacrifice normally attributed to utility-scale solar. As measured at Tectonicus’ prototype lab setup, this project may save 48% water evaporation for the portion of canal under the panels. The project generates clean carbon-free electricity and offsets consumptive water usage.

The research behind the project has taken many forms and began as a series of internal design exercises that looked into various structural and parametric design iterations that strove to optimize structural cost, power generation and canal access and safety. Tectonicus received a highly competitive Department of Energy SBIR research grant to do a techno-economic and structural study. The idea proved to be promising, so they were awarded a phase-2 award to build a prototype located in Bisbee for long-term environmental and performance testing. Tectonicus was also awarded a California Energy Commission research voucher and, with the two awards, was able to work with University of Arizona (water science), UC Merced (PV science), and PNNL National labs (utility and power economics). This SBIR award allowed the generation of predictive environmental, performance, and economic models that have been used to underpin larger projects like the Casa Blanca Canal Pilot. The funding also allowed the architect to do structural and design research which culminated in a utility patent the architect owns that is being used and licensed on the Casa Blanca Canal pilot project.