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Agrivoltaics: Harvesting Synergy, Between Crops and Solar Energy
Historically, large swathes of ground has been used to cultivate crops. With the rising of renewable energies, some fields have been repurposed for electricity generation with huge solar farms or windmills. Unfortunately, the available land is limited and a clash between both expanding needs, food and energy, is unavoidable. However, are they really incompatible? The possibility to use the same area for cultivating both, electricity and crops can maximize the profitability of the land.
What is Agrivoltaics?
Agrivoltaics, also known as solar agriculture, is a practice that involves using the same land for both agricultural food production and photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation. Imagine rows of vibrant crops flourishing beneath transparent solar panels, creating a harmonious relationship between sustainable energy and farming.
Why is Agrivoltaics Important?
- Land Efficiency: By combining agriculture and solar energy, agrivoltaics optimizes land use. It allows farmers to generate and sell clean electricity while preserving valuable arable land for crop cultivation.
- Energy Transition: The transition toward renewable energy sources is needed, and agrivoltaics offers a win-win solution by supporting both food production and clean power generation.
- Global Impact: Covering just 1% of the utilized agricultural area in European Union with agrivoltaics systems could result in 944 GW direct current of installed capacity.
How Does It Work?
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Solar Panels: Photovoltaic panels with different degrees of transparency are installed on frames above the ground, providing partial shade to the crops below, but letting though the solar spectrum components needed for plants’ growth.
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Crop Variety: Different crops can thrive in this environment, benefiting from reduced heat stress and moderated microclimates.
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Synergy: The electricity generated by the solar panels can power farm equipment, irrigation systems, and precision agriculture technologies, further enhancing crop productivity.
Advantages of Vitsolc’s Approach
Traditional agrivoltaics partially blocks the solar irradiation received by the underlying crops. This allows the farmers to tune the irradiation intensity and thus to be able to grow plants that would require less insolation. Yet, we often see solar farms where nothing is cultivated.
This happens because the equilibrium point between crops’ needs and solar power optimization is narrow, and many farmers prefer to harness either cultivation or energy production instead of finding the compromise between both. Using fertile ground for exclusively producing electrical energy means reducing local food production, which implies transporting the needed food over longer distances, with the connected environmental impact. Even when such PV installation happens on less fertile ground, we are missing the opportunity to capture some CO2 growing trees.
This conflict can be solved by Vitsolc’s solar panels tailored for agrivoltaics: They will be transparent to the part of the solar spectrum needed for plants’ growth. With Vitsolc’s technology, the usual local crops can still be grown, without worrying about finding an optimum ground occupancy: Transparent solar panels can occupy 100% of the surface without casting too much shadow on the crops.
Absorbing the infrared light, the solar panels can also decrease the water evaporation and consequently decrease the need for irrigation.
Cultivating a Greener Future
Agrivoltaics represents a promising path toward sustainable energy and resilient agriculture. Vitsolc Technologies aims to contribute in that direction. Transparent photovoltaics allows the energy generation along the whole cultivating area while letting through the necessary light for crops to grow. By harnessing the sun’s power while nurturing our crops, we create a brighter future for both our planet and our plates.
References:
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- Energia Solar
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