Canal top solar panels: A unique nexus of energy, water, and land

The calamity of energy increased over the decades due to population increase, factories, and industries most of the energy comes from the thermal power plants. Renewable energy sources are the finest or desirable energy solution for fossil fuels. Renewable energy sources are various types but solar power plays an important role in renewable energy sources because of its availability, clean safe, and pollution-free nature. The building of a solar power system takes very large areas of land. By using the canals top solar power plant system reduces the requirement of a wide area of land and decreases the water evaporation by sunlight. The cost of solar energy is decreasing very fast. Solar Thermal Electricity (STE) and Solar Photovoltaic Electricity (SPVE) are becoming competitive against conventional energy. To overcome the problems the innovative idea comes in front for installing solar power plant system on canal tops using an inter-array spacing of solar panels this reduces the evaporation of water through the inter-array spacing and increases the radiation on the solar panel so that the power output of system also increases in this paper mainly focuses on canals top solar power system with the design of reflectors and without reflectors and comparing the efficiency and cost of both systems and proposing which system is most idle for solar power plant installation. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.