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Comment by dietr1ch | Hacker News Reader

You are assuming that land is expensive and forgetting that building and maintaining panels over long a canal is harder than building over a large plot.

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No I'm not. I'm assuming that existing unused land should be reserved for better projects when we have currently used land that both can do more and where this helps save water. My comment had absolutely nothing to do with the price of land. Everyone else is missing the "water conservation" part because they're distracted by the solar panels and are getting nerd sniped. This isn't a solar first project, it's a water first project.

Harder but obviously not physically impossible either. From the image I can't imagine what the showstopper would possibly be. Technician on a little dinghy instead of a stepladder doesn't seem like a big deal. Presumably they make it where you can pull the panel off easily if you need to.

You're talking about something that is probably at least 10x the cost to build and maintain. You're making something simple, like swapping a single solar panel, from a ground-level one-man job into now a multi-person job with specialized equipment and water hazards.

Thats 10x the cost somehow? I doubt it. They put solar in all kinds of awkward areas where a technican can't just show up and turn a screwdriver from ground level. Seems it works somehow. Chances are if they go with this, they will have some maintenance craft like a barge platform I'd guess, where the job would be made effectively no different than a ground level job (aside from bringing over the barge which could be quite simple in design, e.g. wood platform raft made from drums and a cheap outboard motor on one end, it's only in the aqueduct after all not in any open water or current.)

Many of those installations end up abandoned when the cost to repair them exceeds the value of the output of the panel.

You just typically don’t notice it because unless the panel is severely damaged, a non-functional panel doesn’t look much different than a functional one.

The showstopper is spending $1,000 of tax payer money for what could be accomplished with $10.

We are just making up numbers now

I haven't seen anyone cite the project costs, so I think we all are

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