#02 Agrivoltaics

A double harvest for farmers: Food and solar energy

Nov 05, 2022

Read time: 4 minutes

In this week’s issue you will learn how to grow food more efficiently while producing more solar energy: Agrivoltaics

“Converting just 1% of American farmland to agrivoltaics could meet US renewable energy targets and save water and create a sustainable long-term food system” - Oregon State University

Top Agrivoltaics News 🗞️

Smart solar panels protect Spanish vineyards: Energy giant Iberdrola is testing an advanced “smart” tracking system to make agrivoltaics more efficient.

Large agrivoltaics projects looking good: Another energy giant, Enel, has done a Europe wide experimental project and the results look promising both in terms of agricultural yield and of greater wellbeing of animals and pollinating species.

Let’s dive in 🧠

We need to increase solar energy production A LOT if we want to reach net zero.

But installing solar panels requires a significant amount of land.

And land that’s great to put solar panels is scarce. We also need it to build towns, preserve ecosystems, and mostly for agriculture.

In the US alone, 52% of land is used for agriculture, and in India it’s 60%. That percentage is set to increase since population is growing and getting richer rapidly.

One potential solution to address this problem is agrivoltaics.

Combining land used for agriculture with solar panels.

How does it work?

There are several ways to combine farmland with solar panels but the most famous one consists of placing the panels above the plants.

This is one of those cases where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

It’s a win-win-win situation.

Win for the panels: The water evaporation from the plants keeps the air under the panels cool, which increases their efficiency. Solar panels like the sun but they don’t like heat.

Win for the plants: Protection from extreme weather conditions (which are becoming more frequent) such as heavy rain, hail, heat, too much sun, etc. Plants like the sun, but only up to a point. If they get too much sun they get stressed and stop photosynthesizing.

Win for the farmers: Less water needed for irrigation, since the panels’ shade lowers the evaporation rate. Increased yield of plants since they are not harmed by the weather. An extra source of revenue or a reduction in costs. 2 things can be done with the solar energy generated:

Use it in the farm to power machinery, trucks, irrigation systems, etc.
Add it to the grid by selling it to an energy provider.
Source: Energy Connects

Even if the agrivoltaics industry is still young, it’s very promising. It could save a lot of land and water and it’s especially great for dry and hot regions that rely heavily on agriculture.

If it’s so awesome, why don’t we use it everywhere?

Cons

Aesthetics: Farmers are not so open to have this in their farms just like many don’t want to have wind turbines in their land. This is known as the “not in my back yard” effect.
Bureaucracy: It changes in every region and the same laws don’t apply when growing food as when producing electricity so it can be very hard to get permits and subsidies.
Upfront costs: Setting up the panels high above the plants is 10% to 20% more expensive than having them on the ground. And the structure takes up planting space.
Source: Fraunhofer Institute

Top Agrivoltaics Projects 💰

I will mention projects instead of companies because any energy company doing solar can get into agrivoltaics.

The first significant agrivoltaics project in Europe: It all started with growing some berries in the Netherlands, the results inspired many of the projects we have now in Europe.

Largest in the US, also used to teach others: This project in Colorado is the biggest in the country and it’s used to teach farmers about the benefits of agrivoltaics.

The largest in the world is of course in China: Of the 2.8 GW of agrivoltaics in China this project alone supplies 1 GW. It’s a massive goji berry plantation and Huawei is behind it.

❗Extreme knowledge area❗

If you think this wasn’t enough here are a few more links to dig deeper.

World Economic Forum: Their take on agrivoltaics explained very clearly and with an example of agrivoltaics for broccoli.

A more technical one: For those of you who want to know more about the technical details, this is the article.

Video lovers: For the video lovers, like me, this is a great video to understand the topic in more detail. This channel in general is awesome to learn about climate tech.

That’s it for today, 1 climate tech topic in under 5 minutes.

Next week… Green Steel! 🤯

If you enjoyed today’s issue, the best compliment you could pay me would be to share it with one person who you think would benefit from it :)