Minimising evaporation from water storages

Research into reducing water evaporation from storages has been of interest for many decades with large scale field trials as early as the 1960s. The research has explored different technologies, such as physical coverings and chemical films, but to date no solution has been found that is viable on a commercial scale.
Typically, dams have a large surface area to volume ratio, which leads to their high relative evaporation losses and can make solutions such as physical coverings expensive.
The evaporation mitigation project which is part of SIP2 is about developing and demonstrating cost-effective and practical solutions to reduce evaporation from water storages. There has been work in the laboratory over the last 18 months and this summer field trials will get underway.