NYC Floating - Solar Hudson River Resevoirs etc

Hudson River Floating Solar Panels.

Some back of the napkin math

Solar panels keep getting cheaper and will probably continue
Current NYC Summer peak at hottest time is 11000 Megawatts.
Floating solar on the hudson river, resevoirs, long island sound could be an interesting place to put a lot of solar panels

How much power does NYC use?

NYSIO Zone J - which is NYC, I think. Durring summer we peak on the worst days at 11000 Megawatts. https://www.nyiso.com/documents/20142/2226333/2022-Gold-Book-Final-Public.pdf Current power comes from https://www.nyiso.com/real-time-dashboard

To replace all this with solar is very complicated. What about night? What about cloudy days? What about winter? Etc etc. But lets just simplify.

How many panels?

Ignoring all details such as panel age, cleanliness, angle, MPPT efficiency, etc. Ignoring all of that.

11000 Megawatts/350 Watts = 32,000,000 panels

Current bulk costs are $0.10/Watt so 1.1 Billion Dollars ( Just panels, ignoring inverters, support, hookup, etc)

Assuming 12 watts per square foot, so lets say 1 billion square feet, thats 35 square miles.

Can we float these solar panels?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_solar

Hudson River - Half of the hudson river along the side of Manhattan would be 5 square miles. Add in parts of east river, the bay, etc and you could get close to 35 square miles.

Jamaica Bay - 24 square miles

Resevoirs - https://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwater/html/drinking/reservoir.shtml NYC resevoirs which are closed to motorized boats are about 25 square miles in surface area.

Long Island Sound- Easily fit a 35 square mile section