(Idaho National Laboratory Press Release, April 24, 2026)
By Paul Menser, INL Communications
The U.S. has nearly as many miles of irrigation canals as it does highways.
The canals, which provide water for millions of acres of crops and pastures, are managed by hundreds of canal companies and irrigation districts ranging in size from utility scale to mom and pop. With demand for water growing, especially in the arid American West, experts agree that the U.S. irrigation infrastructure is ripe for a makeover.
To help modernize these canals and waterways that support almost 60 million acres of agriculture, the Idaho National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory developed IrrigationViz. IrrigationViz is an online software tool to help water users explore modernization options. These options include ways to improve water delivery and add power generation that creates new revenue streams, supporting district operations.
The tool is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydropower and Hydrokinetic Office (H2O). Participation has grown since IrrigationViz was introduced in 2021. The tool’s success has allowed national laboratory developers to add new capabilities.
“The more we can validate and verify our calculations with data collected from real life, the more effective it’s going to be,” said Kara Cafferty, the INL energy and water systems researcher who leads DOE’s Irrigation Modernization Project.
In a recently published paper, “IrrigationViz: A Geospatial Visualization Application to Facilitate Irrigation Modernization,” Cafferty and the team detail the use cases for the tool and how to leverage it for different scenarios.
An economic powerhouse
Irrigation infrastructure took off in the mid-1800s, when local, state and federal water and irrigation projects helped establish the U.S. rural economy. A lot has changed in 200 years, most recently the introduction of computers, AI and other advanced technology, but much of the U.S. irrigated agriculture system remains as originally constructed. Presently, agriculture consumes about 37% of the nation’s water, and 80% of water in the West.
Researchers have learned that integrating energy projects into irrigated agriculture can be challenging, and may require a detailed understanding of technology, regulatory environments, and physical resources. Modernization projects require large capital investments and need careful planning to succeed.
Many irrigation districts have limited financial resources that may prevent them from exploring the potential benefits of modernization. “Planning is a hurdle to projects,” Cafferty said. “If you can figure things out in the early stages, you can prevent some of the issues that come up, like a lack of project revenue or funding or district management or patron support for a project.”
IrrigationViz can help water users estimate how specific investments can help them save water and simultaneously produce revenue and energy. For example, it can calculate how much income hydroelectric generation might add to a system.
IrrigationViz has expanded to include how-to videos and the ability to evaluate distributed energy generation potential that considers proximity to transmission lines. It now includes more capabilities for adding boundaries and point features. “Water users don’t operate in a box and may need to be able to consider neighboring or sometimes overlapping entities to be successful in their projects,” Cafferty said.
New technologies, possibilities
Modernizing irrigation water delivery infrastructure – like piping or lining open canals – can create many water and energy opportunities based on local needs and goals. IrrigationViz can help interested water users and irrigators explore their options and identify the highest priority projects for their system.
“We continually show the tool to irrigation districts,” said Bo Saulsbury, an INL team member. “A lot of these districts don’t have GIS mapping capabilities. This gives them the tools to measure distance and area, map power transmission systems and draw in different parts of their existing systems.” Also, the tool allows them to export their data for integration into other software.
IrrigationViz has reached a point where its developers are ready to promote it more actively. “We’re really trying to get the tool into users’ hands and build our user base,” Saulsbury said.
From small to big
IrrigationViz is aimed at helping the spectrum of water users and irrigation organizations, from small to large and straightforward to extremely complex. One large district that provided feedback and data for tool development has been central California’s Turlock Irrigation District, which has more than 250 miles of gravity-fed canals irrigating roughly 150,000 acres of farmland. The Turlock district also owns and operates an electric generation, transmission, and distribution system that provides power to 240,000 people within a 662-square-mile area.
The district’s involvement and cooperation have helped the national lab teams integrate data for other energy generating technologies into IrrigationViz. This includes ground-mounted, floating, and canopy solar installations, all of great interest to California users and members of the state Assembly, which has instituted several variable power incentives for agriculture irrigation.
“Irrigation patterns are changing across the United States,” Cafferty said. “Irrigation districts are managing through droughts and having to do more with less, and so they’re looking at ways to innovate and to keep themselves going: Can we do revenue generating projects? Can we pipe canals to maintain water distribution capabilities? Does it make sense to pipe water for a whole system, or can we reimagine some of these systems? And IrrigationViz is helping them answer those questions.”
About Idaho National Laboratory
Battelle Energy Alliance manages INL for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nation’s center for nuclear energy research and development, and also performs research in each of DOE’s strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment. For more information, visit www.inl.gov. Follow us on social media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.
