On 4/4/2022 4:59 PM, Bruce Johnson - johnson at Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU (via tml
list) wrote:
> I have often wondered why solar panels aren’t backed with some sort of water
> cooling systems; the hot water produced could simply be used as such or the sort
> of heat transfer mechanism they use for solar water heating in places where it
> would freeze (iirc they use ethylene glycol as the working fluid, and dump the
> heat into the water tank) as solar cell efficiency going down as a function of
> heat is a well known issue in hot climates, to the point where it affects the
> square footage of panel needed to produce a particular nominal  power generation.
>
>

	I know there are repeated plans to put solar panels over the water canals used
in California and Arizona. This would a) generate power, b) reduce the
evaporation from said canals, and c) allow the panels to generate more power
because the back of the panels are cooler.

	The reason for not having done this is mostly political inertia.