How Much Water do Solar Farms Actually Use?
This land clearly has wetland areas. What will happen to the land after production starts with how much water is required to keep solar panels functional?
There's an infographic going around lately that claims to show the relative amounts of water used by four different sources of electrical power: coal, nuclear, natural gas and solar. The graphic claims that solar comes out the clear winner in terms of water conservation, using no water at all to generate power. But is the claim correct? Not quite....
This study estimates how much water would be required to meet Renewable Portfolio Standards for electricity generation in five western states if 100 percent of this demand were supplied by solar power.
Solar photovoltaic developers say their plants don’t use much water, but “much” is relative. True, they use a fraction of what a water-cooled solar thermal power plant consumes annually — about a 16,689 gallons per megawatt for photovoltaics compared with 2.61 million gallons per megawatt for wet-cooled solar thermal — but a large photovoltaic array can still easily use more water in a year than an entire residential block.