Novel Energy and Evaporative Storage Technologies for Irrigators (NEESTI)

Future Drought Fund: Resilient Landscapes

Australia faces a critical trilemma securing water, food, and energy. This project analyses economic, environmental, regulatory, and policy opportunities to enhance drought resilience in five irrigated agricultural sectors by incorporating floating solar photovoltaics (FPV) on storage dams across cotton, sugarcane, pecans, ginger, and rice. We foster collaboration between consultants, university researchers, industry, and irrigators, providing rich case study data. We investigate catchment run-off factors and a Virtual Energy Network application, where FPV supplies energy to host farm loads at lower cost but can also provide new revenue during droughts. On-farm experiments aim to optimise FPV configuration to maximise evaporative mitigation, produce clean energy, and offer ease of installation. The regulatory pathways pillar of our project will seize Australia's FPV opportunity by establishing a robust legal framework and policy incentives, scale up and FPV deployment and adoption.