Happy to answer any questions you might have about the possibilities of the technology!
Lastly, do you know off-hand if these bold claims (see below) are exaggerated or oversimplified in any way?
> Covering just 10 percent of the world’s hydropower reservoirs with floatovoltaics could generate as much electricity as all the world’s operating fossil fuel power plants combined
> We found that countries in the Americas and Africa could benefit most: even low coverage of reservoirs by floatovoltaics should generate all the solar energy needed to decarbonize their electricity sector. Brazil and Canada could be hotspots, each requiring only about 5% coverage of their plentiful reservoirs to satisfy their massive solar-energy needs. Last year, Brazil implemented regulatory changes to help the industry to develop (see ‘Brazil’s photovoltaic boom’).
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01525-1#ref-CR13 (linked in the article)
Yes, those claims are technically correct, in the same way that the claims we could power all of humanity's needs with a fraction of the sahara desert are also technically correct. In practice, competing needs for the water bodies and especially the cost of transmission lines / the lower cost of nearby desert land for many of the sites means that it's certainly an oversimplification.
Land for solar in the county is not scarce. Look up "agrivoltaics". There are good reasons to float solar on reservoirs, that just isn't one.
Also - in SB county, there is an ordinance banning utility-scale solar within the county (thanks local zoning laws....). We get exempted because the reservoir is federal land.
Farmers have grown used to changing their behavior, in recent centuries. The successful ones today did. The successful ones tomorrow will have.
Laws can be changed. In Colorado, they were already. Others will follow.