May 20, 2026
Project Nexus, the first solar project of its kind in the U.S., combines the efforts of the public, private and academic sectors to solve two of the Golden State’s most pressing crises simultaneously: energy and water.
The 1.6 MW “solar channel” project is the result of a partnership between project construction company Solar Aquagrid, the University of California Merced, California Department of Water Resourcesand California Turlock Irrigation District. The four groups came together to create a pilot project that lasted four years.
Jordan Harris, ever Virgin plates director who helped make acts like Paula Abdul and The Smashing Pumpkins household names, is now co-founder and CEO of Solar Aquagrid. He says the $20 million Project Nexus has done much more than just serve as a simple proof of concept.
“It’s very encouraging,” Harris said of the pilot. “It met or exceeded the feasibility study, in terms of performance.”
Merced’s first 2021 study from the University of California appeared in the scientific journal Nature Sustainability in 2021. The study estimated that shading California’s 6,000 miles of open water canals could save up to 63 billion gallons of water annually, helping to secure funding and positive sentiment for Solar Aquagrid’s current efforts.
After the groups’ pilot project was completed earlier this spring, the real-world results are even more promising, Harris says.
“This has been a four-year journey,” he says. “Bridging water is very different from building solar on land, obviously with interesting challenges, but also some unexpected benefits.”
Two birds with one solar panel
The research data Solar Aquagrid received from the project’s pilot program shows that their efforts can help solve California’s energy and water problems in equal measure.
“The most expensive and major concern for any canal operator is the growth of weeds and algae in the water,” says Harris. “You block the sunlight coming in, you interrupt photosynthesis and it literally stops growing. We know we have a full irrigation season’s worth of data… We’ve been able to measure the reduction in evaporation and the reduction in aquatic weed growth, and they are significant.”
The Golden State’s water problems have now progressed to the point where they are no longer “well documented.” Although recent winter storms have left many of the area’s reservoirs around historical averages, the state recently experienced a years-long drought that represented the driest period in the state in the past 1,200 years.
So water is still very precious. Perhaps the most obvious solution to alleviate this problem, Harris says, is to prevent the state’s existing water from going anywhere. The state has already dumped about 96 million “shade balls” into the Los Angeles reservoir, saving about 290 million gallons, according to a 2025 article in the Toronto Star.
Of course, solar energy projects can be extremely expensive, and further in-depth research was needed. For the Project Nexus team, the goal was to bring the solar industry to them by driving down the costs of these projects as much as possible.
It takes a village
Bringing together public utilities and private companies is normally a very difficult undertaking. However, Harris says Project Nexus’ work with the Turlock Irrigation District (TID) has created a near-perfect storm of working conditions, thanks to TID’s unique positioning in California’s energy and water ecosystem.
“(TID) has 250 miles of open channels,” he said. “Their canals have different widths and orientations, and the other perfect thing for them, and for us, is that they are one of the few water irrigation districts that are also energy suppliers in their districts. They would be the consumers of the power, and that is very important.”
Solar Aquagrid’s work with TID, along with the other groups at UC Merced and Project Nexus, has collected enough data to present to both the State of California and potential other solar project installers. Together with the University of Southern California and researchers from seven other California universities, the team created the California Solar Canal Initiative to further increase potential interest.
“CSCI’s goals are to see what policies can be put in place to accelerate solar duct adoption. And number two, get to a real cost analysis by monetizing the benefits and really looking at the economics,” Harris says. “Finally, we’re creating a GIS mapping dashboard to identify opportunities in those 4,000 miles of California canals.”
The tier-one opportunities for the Project Nexus team are primarily the low-hanging fruit that are easiest to identify, according to Harris. In particular, canals adjacent to electrical substations or EV charging ports would be prime real estate for future projects. Fortunately, since TID also happens to be an electricity provider in central California, some potential solar interconnection points would be just 15 feet away.
All of this, Harris adds, is in service of making solar waterway adoption as attractive and easy as possible. Harris says the team’s method seems to be working.
From pilot in California to worldwide projects
That the solar industry would look at already disturbed spaces such as irrigation canals and aqueducts not Taking advantage of that would be a big mistake, says Harris, and it seems the industry itself recognizes that. The company has already seen strong interest from several solar developers, both in the US and abroad.
“One of our main goals is to encourage the industry to recognize these opportunities, and it’s a huge opportunity,” says Harris. “Not just here in this country, but we’ve had visitors from Romania interested in doing this along the Danube. We’ve had visitors from Ukraine, from Saudi Arabia. We’ve met with three different water districts in Spain. … It’s a global opportunity.”
Yet Harris and the Solar Aquagrid team recognize that change is often difficult to accept, especially in the world of infrastructure. He expects many visitors will watch and learn from the Project Nexus pilot, rather than copying it directly.
“We can just see where this can lead, as you’ve seen from the first EVs to where they’re going, and everything like that, with the brilliant minds that exist in the industry,” he says. “We at Solar Aquagrid have been technology agnostic and we really wanted to do due diligence and study different design solutions.
“There’s some exciting innovation happening that I think will drive costs down before we even look at the returns on benefits.”
As Harris says, these opportunities are ripe for the taking once economies of scale materialize, driving down the price of these types of projects as they become more common. The Project Nexus team is proud to have their pilot serve as both a functional solar generation project and a proof of concept for the wider world on solar channels of this size.
But what helps even more, he adds, is that aqueducts themselves have undergone millennia of refinement. Now it is the solar industry that must take the next steps.
“Let’s face it: We’re dealing with infrastructure, by design, that is thousands of years old. The Romans (made aqueducts),” Harris says. “So there is plenty of room for innovation.”
Tags: California, canal top, project, utility, utility scale
