Largest Farm to Grow Crops Under Solar Panels Proves To Be A Bumper Crop For Agrivoltaic Land Use::undefined
Agrivoltaics is the combined use of solar panels and agriculture under the panels that together use less energy and produce more crops. It can also provide shade for livestock.
As this is not mentioned, is it possible to extend the system by collecting rainwater falling on solar panels ?
The rainwater would fall off the slanted panels and fall onto the plants.
What is you installed a gutter? And made the down pipe go into a bucket
Then the plants would have no water and die.
Sure you could do that, but… why?
To more evenly distribute the collected rainfall rather than to water just the plants sitting under the edge of each solar row? Or to use the rainfall for other farmy things?
I guess it would depend on the crops, but wouldn't it somewhat limit the use of farming equipment. I assume you're not going to fit a tractor in the field with those panels and supports.
It depends on the type supporting structure for the panels. In Germany a company build it tall enough to use their normal farm equipment: Image
I've seen pictures of massive tractors pulling several ploughs side by side in the US, that would most likely not work with this, but there are plenty of solution for anything on a slightly smaller scale.
It's usually permanent pasture grazing that's mixed with solar panels. Take low value land that doesn't support the use of large equipment, add value with panels and get free shade for livestock.
There's lots of startups making smaller agile AI powered electric robotics for agriculture. Would pair well with a farm like this.
This is harder than it looks.
See those rows of crops? On most farms, you need to be able to drive a tractor through them. I don’t mean a riding mower, I mean a giant thing that pulls a tool that’s working on 5-10 rows at a time doing things like tilling, seeding, fertilizing, harvesting, etc. If there’s big metal pillars every row or every other row, that tool can’t be used.
Thus, as pictured, those kinds of panels can only be used on a farm that’s not using large multi-row agriculture machinery. That means it’ll work for small family farms but not the large ag operations where this sort of tech could really kick ass.What I would really love to see is more solar over commercial parking lots. That means a million little projects instead of a few huge ones, but think about how much surface area that is overall. It’s huge.
The key to doing that is twofold- 1. create a few cookie-cutter designs for the frameworks that can be tweaked for individual projects, and 2. remove red tape from their implementation.
It should be possible for a business to buy off the shelf plans for such a thing, have a local engineer tweak them for the project specifics, and then have a local contractor do the installation, and have this happen in under 6 months.As it stands, building anything above where humans will be involves a nightmare of engineering and insurance and liability, making it cost-prohibitive for most companies. That needs to get easier. I believe every parking lot should have solar above it- that not only will produce a ton of power, but it’ll keep the cars cooler in summer.
So we need levitating solar panels. Got it.
There are plenty of crops that have to be tended and harvested by hand: Most green leafy vegetables for example.
This opens those fields to dual use alongside power generation, which might reduce agricultural use of fossil fuels, and provide shade for field workers which is especially dangerous with climate change raising heat levels.
Might be a crazy idea but maybe they can just use smaller tractors. I’m not sure if we have the technology to build Smaller tractors. But since they are needed maybe there could be a Lot of R&D to make a tractor that fits under the space available in these installations.
Small tractors are easy. The issue is efficiency. The big tractor is big because the tool it pulls behind it covers ~10 rows per pass. You can easily build a small tractor that does 1-2 rows per pass, but that means you need a lot more passes, which means doing anything takes a lot longer.
In the future, it would be cool to see the steel frames facilitate rails that equipment could ride on and work the field beneath. Perhaps it could even be moved by water pressure, since similar equipment in the shape of large scale sprinklers already exists.
This might never come to pass, because indoor farming can produce the same amount of some crops and grains as the equivalent of 40x as much land.
Yeah I think indoor farming / vertical farming is going to be the ultimate answer. Much more efficient in every way, including resource use, water, pesticide, etc.
Not more efficient use of Gravel. Unless the person’s government requires water-barriers/floodwalls on fields for some reason. But yeah, indoor is great, I’ve personally been experimenting with bulbs in rock wool. They don’t seem as likely to bloom on the first cycle, but otherwise they’ve been thriving.
This seems to largely be a “retelling” of an original story from NPR from 2021. The original has significantly more information from actually interviewing the owner of the project.
Possibly a stupid question, but is there anything toxic in the solar panels or their infrastructure that could contaminate the plants or soil below? Particularly if the panels were damaged in, say, extreme weather, but also as a result of general wear and tear. I'm thinking heavy metal dust, carcinogenic liquid components, that sort of thing. As per the article this seems like it could be a good land use pairing, but not if it renders the soil unfit for agriculture due to a buildup of contamination.
Not an expert, but my gut reaction is not really. The panels themselves are largely glass, aluminum and silicon, with fairly small amounts of doping agents. There are electronics but since they're outside they're largely encased in something, wiring which would be plastic and copper or possibly aluminum, and then the structure itself which is going to be steel and concrete.
Solar panels are significantly more sturdy than one would think given they are essentially a giant piece of glass. They're usually rated to 12mm hail or more, which would normally absolutely devastate a crop. They don't really go bad either they just become less efficient over time. There's no moving parts to wear, no liquids, and in some designs very little in the way of electronics to go bad.
Essentially, I wouldn't be surprised if there would be more harmful contamination from a diesel tractor driving around in the field or from a nearby coal power plant than from any kind of solar array as long as it didn't have like, lead legs or something.
That being said, these kind of projects have been shown a lot but they're unlikely to be used in most large scale farming - they usually interfere with any machines used to plant or harvest, and are only really well suited to a few crops. Parking lots are a much easier target for this type of solar project.
Parking lots or at least literally any public space that still refuses to become a third space or plant enough native plants/trees.
I've heard of the panels burning down making fhe field unsafe for use in the future
That's not a thing.
Do you have any more information on this? A quick search largely just shows results about how firefighters need to be careful since the panels can look bad but still be producing voltage and are a shock hazard.
It's probably a fair point - any fire there is now going to be burning a while load of artificial materials instead (as well as) plants. I could see that being an issue if there was a big fire. (Much larger cost to the farmer too!)
most electronics have lead, i think thatd be the main thing .
Not really. Not for the last 20 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive
Agro-solar is a win win. Solar is the fastest and the most economic energy to deploy.
