SOLAR PANELS & FARMING

We have a world population expected to grow by 1.2 billion people within 15 years, coupled with a growing demand for meat, eggs, and dairy, which soak up over 70% of fresh water for crops, plus electricity demand that’s growing even faster than population growth.

What are we supposed to do about all of that? Could combining Solar Panels Farming be a viable solution to all of those problems? let’s take a closer look at adding solar to our farmland as well as some of the side benefits and challenges it creates.

So what if we started to go vertical with our solar panels? That’s where we start to get some interesting alternatives to standard ground-mounted solar park-style installations. Using vertically mounted bifacial modules allows for more arable land. And if you don’t know what bifacial solar panels are, they can collect solar energy from both sides of the panel.

Solar parks in rural areas have been around for almost two decades. The major problem with this type of solar installation is that the ground beneath the panels can’t be used, mainly due to the small spaces between the rows of panels which aren’t large enough for modern farming equipment to pass through.

It is possible to convert a typical solar park into dual land use when it’s designated as a living area for grazing by small livestock like chicken, geese, and sheep, as well as for beekeeping. These animals are beneficial to solar farms because they reduce the cost of maintaining vegetation growth and don’t introduce any risk to the panels themselves. The same can’t be said of something a bit larger like pigs, goats, horses, or cattle. It’s a known fact that cattle hate solar panels.

When more space is allowed in between the solar panel rows, crops can be grown there. However, the space beneath the panels still isn’t usable and needs to be maintained. This is considered alternating land use instead of dual land use because there are areas of the land that are one or the other not both solar and crops at the same time. The land between the rows will be shaded during some hours of the day, meaning you’re altering the characteristics of the land and the types of crops that can be grown.

When the plant reaches its threshold, it can suffer from ‘sunburn’ and heat stress, and plants. This is a slight misnomer since these plants just require more sunlight than shade plants, are particularly useful in combination with solar panels since the panels obviously block but not all available sunlight can be converted into biomass. After a certain threshold, which is called the light saturation point, plants can’t absorb any more energy, so they need to get rid of that excess energy by evaporating water.

This type of installation would work particularly well in areas that suffer from wind erosion since the structures reduce wind speeds which can help protect the land and crops grown there. The bifacial panels also can generate more power per square meter than traditional single-faced panels and don’t require any moving parts.

Then there’s also the option of mounting panels on stilts, which allows Solar Panels Farming machinery to pass underneath. In this design, you have to maintain a certain clearance between rows to protect the stilts from the machinery, so there is a modest arable land surface loss, usually 3-10%.

Many variations on this theme are currently under active research. Instead of fixed panel mounting, panels can be mounted with actuators, allowing the panels to tilt in one or two directions, which allows for both solar energy and plant growth optimization. This can be particularly important during the initial stages of growth for some crops.

But what about growing crops under the elevated panels? You’d think that solar panels casting shade on plants would be a bad thing, but the way photosynthesis works make things interesting. Plants grow their mass out of CO2 with the help of sunlight. They literally are growing from the air but not all available sunlight can be converted into biomass. After a certain threshold, which is called the light saturation point, plants can’t absorb any more energy, so they need to get rid of that excess energy by evaporating water.

If we oversimplify this, we can divide the plants into two groups: “I’ll have my light supersized” plants and “can I order my light off the kids' menu” plants. That group, the so-called shade plants, are particularly useful in combination with solar panels since the panels obviously block some of the available sunlight. Now sun plants are sometimes referred to as shade-intolerant plants. This is a slight misnomer since these plants just require more sunlight than shade plants but can also suffer from too much sunlight.

In the RESOLA project conducted between 2016 and 2018 in the German area of Lake Constance or the Bodensee as the Germans call it, they demonstrated that during a relatively ‘wet and cold’ year in 2016 APV-crop yields were 25% less than the non-solar reference field, but in the ‘dry and hot’ years of 2017 and 2018, the APV-crops yields exceeded the reference field. That’s a sign that APV could be a game-changer in hot and arid regions. The amount of experience with agrivoltaics is still fairly limited and the big successes have been mainly with shade-tolerant crops like lettuce, spinach, potatoes, and tomatoes. Increased amounts of water evaporation. According to a report from the German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy, nearly all crops can be cultivated under solar panels, but there may be some yield loss during the less sunny seasons for sun-hungry plants. causing increased amounts of water evaporation. According to a report from the German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy, nearly all crops can be cultivated under solar panels, but there may be some yield loss during the less sunny seasons for sun-hungry plants. causing increased amounts of water evaporation. According to a report from the German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy, nearly all crops can be cultivated under solar panels, but there may be some yield loss during the less sunny seasons for sun-hungry plants.

When the plant reaches its threshold, it can suffer from ‘sunburn’ and heat stress,, causing increased amounts of water evaporation. According to a report from the German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy, nearly all crops can be cultivated under solar panels, but there may be some yield loss during the less sunny seasons for sun-hungry plants.

The company “GroenLeven”, a subsidiary of the BayWa Group, which is headquartered in Munich Germany, has started several pilot projects with local fruit farmers. Their largest site is in the village of Babberich in the east of the Netherlands, close to the German border, at a large 4-hectare raspberry farm, which is about 10 acres for those of us not on the metric. ld. That’s a sign that APV could be a game-changer in hot and arid regions. The amount of experience with agrivoltaics is still fairly limited and the big successes have been mainly with shade-tolerant crops like lettuce, spinach, potatoes, and tomatoes.

The company “GroenLeven”, a subsidiary of the BayWa Group, which is headquartered in Munich Germany, has started several pilot projects with local fruit farmers. Their largest site is in the village of Babberich in the east of the Netherlands, close to the German border, at a large 4-hectare raspberry farm, which is about 10 acres for those of us not on the metric.

One big benefit for the farmer was the amount of work saved from managing the plastic tunnels, which are easily damaged by hail and summer storms. In those cases, fruits may become unsellable from the damage, but they still have to be harvested anyway. During the last summer storms, the fruits under the panels didn’t sustain any damage, while the harvest from the reference field was destroyed.

So just based on that, agrivoltaics appears to be a winning strategy. If we were to convert even a fraction of our current agricultural land use into agrivoltaics, a large portion of our energy needs can be met easily. And with the added benefits of reduced water consumption, agrivoltaics can also be a game-changer in hot and arid regions of the world.

The main benefit comes from the fact that solar panels are great at reducing GHG emissions, without sacrificing arable land. Especially if we can convert land that’s currently being used to grow biofuel crops, like palm oil and corn farms, into land for actual human food production and consumption or even reforestation, that would be a huge win!

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