Agrivoltaics. An economic lifeline for American farmers? - YouTube

As you know by now, I often try to kick off  these little weekly musings with a bit of  

light-hearted repartee just to get you good folks  in the mood for the brain bending technological  

information download that usually follows. But  this week's program has to do with agriculture,  

and with the possible exception of some  entertaining images of fruit and vegetables  

that are hilariously taking on the form of  male genitalia, I couldn't really find anything  

terribly amusing in the data that I was analyzing.  So I've decided to just give it to you straight...

unlike that carrot... oh come on!

Hello and welcome to Just Have a Think. Our global  agricultural systems account for more than a third  

of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.  They also use a huge amount of water. According  

to the World Bank, agriculture consumes about  70 percent of all fresh water withdrawals,  

and an even higher share of what's  known as consumptive water use,  

as a result of evapotranspiration of crops.  Rapid changes in the global climate mean that  

if we carry on with our current agricultural  methods there's no way there'll be enough  

water even to grow the current level of food  production, let alone what we'll need by 2050.  

Right now that system is struggling to feed more  than 7.8 billion people. In 30 years time that  

number would be more like 9.8 billion. And as more  and more of those people are lifted out of poverty  

and begin to adopt a heavier, more varied  diet, food production will somehow need to  

double over the next three decades at a time when  the rapidly increasing impacts of climate change  

are making current farming practices look less and  less sustainable as every year goes by. Access to  

food will need to be drastically improved so  that some of the gross inequities in the world  

are addressed. And food waste will need to be  dramatically reduced too. Right now we throw away  

more than 30 percent of everything we produce. If  nothing changes at all then we will quite likely  

be looking at food shortages, water scarcity,  regional conflicts and economic destabilization.  

We could just all stop eating meat and  switch to plant-based diets of course.  

That would immediately and  sustainably fix the entire problem,  

and provide every human on the planet with  all the calories and nutrients they need.  

I've done it, and I love it. And so have hundreds  of thousands of other people around the world.  

But let's be honest here - it's unlikely that  billions of people, especially in the richer  

industrialized nations, are going to voluntarily  give up the practice of eating dead animals.  

So all sorts of agricultural systems are now being  developed and promoted all over the world to try  

and make the whole thing more sustainable. And one  of the ideas gaining a lot of interest right now  

is to combine food production with  energy production in a concept known  

as agrophotovoltaics, or agri-voltaics or just  APV for short. There's a strong clue in the name  

of course, and sure enough in very basic terms it  means putting solar panels in a field where crops  

are also grown. So how does it work in practice  and what do we gain from doing it? Well, it turns  

out there's a limit to how much sun any individual  plant can actually use. It's something known  

as the light saturation point. Any extra light  received beyond that point makes no difference at  

all to the plant's photosynthesis. All it does is  make the plant sweat, which makes it more thirsty.  

So by strategically placing solar panels directly  above a crop growing area it's theoretically  

possible to precisely regulate how much sunlight  reaches each plant so that they've got the optimum  

level for maximum growth with minimum water loss.  All the excess sunlight that would otherwise be  

wasted on the plants would then be captured on the  upper side of the solar panels to generate energy.  

And if the panels are raised up high enough  above the ground then livestock, farm workers,  

and even agricultural machinery can all operate  very happily in the cool shade beneath the canopy.  

And it's not a one-way street either. It's a  mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. As  

the plants grow beneath the panels they help  to keep the panels cool. Ironically solar  

panels don't actually like getting hot. It reduces  their operating efficiency. So anything that can  

draw heat off them will help to make the panels  more productive. According to a study by Oregon  

State University, panels positioned correctly  above plants can produce as much as 10 percent  

more electricity. That electrical  energy can be used to run the farm  

with electric tractors and equipment, and  to power precision agricultural technology  

that helps further reduce water usage. All of that  obviously reduces the running costs for the farm.  

And any surplus energy can be stored in battery  banks or sent to the grid for consumer use. So  

you're effectively using the sunlight twice - to  grow cash crops, and to generate a second income  

stream from the solar power generation. Farmers  all over the world are finding it increasingly  

difficult to make ends meet without huge  government subsidies. In the USA that  

struggle is starting to nudge towards something  more like an existential crisis, as trade wars,  

commodity prices and climate change all combine  into a perfect storm of economic disaster.  

Between 2011 and 2018 more than a hundred  thousand farms were shut down across America,  

so the ability to use the land more profitably  while still providing crops for the nation  

is a potential lifeline that could  keep many farmers from going bankrupt.  

And the OSU study also calculated that  converting just one percent of American  

farmland to agri-voltaics could meet the entire US  national renewable energy target, not to mention  

saving a significant amount of water and creating  sustainable long-term food production systems.  

But it's not just happening in America. APV  technology is being quite enthusiastically  

embraced all over the world. Japan implemented  654 projects between 2013 and 2018 with a peak  

generating capacity of about 150 megawatts. South  Korea currently have about two megawatts worth,  

and of course the mighty China, who as  we've learned on so many occasions on  

this channel never ever do anything on  a small scale, installed an estimated  

four gigawatts of agricultural PV capacity  just in the three years between 2015 and 2018.  

It's a system that's yet to gain significant  momentum down in Australia though,  

despite the huge potential benefits that could be  reaped in that country. Competition for land in  

Oz is pretty fierce. It's a vast landmass, more or  less the same size as the 48 contiguous states of  

America, but food production is only possible in  fairly restricted areas that have enough rainfall,  

agricultural value, and existing infrastructure  - especially easy connections to the electricity  

grid - to make any operation economically  viable. And that proximity to the grid  

draws solar PV developers to exactly the same  geographical locations. And in many cases that's  

actually caused a conflict between developers  and farmers in those areas. So agri-voltaics  

would seem like a bit of a blindingly obvious  solution! There are no legislative barriers to  

APV in Australia today. The only obstacles, to be  honest, are wilful ignorance, and an unwillingness  

on the part of farmers and solar developers  to cooperate for everyone's mutual benefit.  

There is a growing media exposure to the idea  though, like this superb report by Remy Rauline  

for the Renew website. And I'll leave a link  to that article in the description section  

below here. Over here in Europe, according to this  report by Agora Energiewende and the British think  

tank Ember, 2020 marked the first time that the EU  generated more power from renewable sources than  

from fossil fuels. Renewable energies made up 38%  of the European energy mix in 2020, compared with  

37 percent from oil gas and coal. So the potential  for agri-voltaics here is huge. France is already  

getting involved, led by the wine making industry.  Sun 'Agri - a subsidiary of French solar developer  

SunR - has installed a viticulture agri-voltaic  system in the wine growing area of Piolenc in  

Herault in South Eastern France as part of a  programme to test how agrivoltaics perform in  

specific crop cultures. The project is running in  partnership with the local chamber of agriculture  

as part of a program supported by the French  Environment and Energy Management Agency.  

In a recent interview with PV  magazine a Sun'Agri spokesperson  

said "Vines are among the crops most affected by  the effects of climate change, so it's essential  

that they be at the heart of our experiments". A  thousand square meters of vines in the test area  

were planted with the black  Grenache red wine grape.  

600 square meters were covered by a system of 280  panels with a generation capacity of 84 kilowatts.  

The panels were mounted 4.2 meters or about 14  feet above ground and are remotely controlled by  

an artificial intelligence algorithm that Sun'Agri  have been developing for more than a decade.  

The algorithm determines the ideal tilt of the  panels based on available sunshine, the water  

requirements of viticulture, the growth model  of the crop, as well as soil quality and weather  

conditions. And in the event of extreme climatic  hazards like drought, heatwave, hail, frost or  

heavy rain, the system positions the panels to  protect the crops. Water demand was reduced by  

as much as 34 percent in the PV sheltered vines,  thanks to that reduction in evapotranspiration  

that we looked at earlier. There are some  challenges that could stand in the way of  

widespread use of agri-voltaics though, as this  recent research paper by the German Fraunhofer  

Institute points out, not least of which is  the higher initial capital costs compared to  

conventional ground-mounted PV installations.  those costs are mainly due to the much taller  

support systems used for the modules,  as well as the need for site-specific  

system design. But the report also found that  compared to other renewable energy sources today,  

APV overall looks quite competitive. The industry  comparison standard known as levelized cost of  

electricity, or LCOE, comes out at 7 to 12 euro  cents per kilowatt hour for agri-voltaics. That  

is higher than the ground mounted systems but it's  already comparable with small rooftop PV systems.  

And as a bit of a bonus, freestanding APV  installations also provide a valuable habitat for  

other plants and wildlife. With careful management  the extra protection from excess harmful sunlight  

improves the health of the soil and increases the  level of nutrients creating important ecosystems  

for plants and insects, which in turn increases  the availability of food for field animals  

as well as birds and bats. Agri-voltaic technology  itself is improving all the time. Panels can now  

be made translucent to allow finer control of  the amounts and specific wavelengths of light  

that are either absorbed by the panel or allowed  through to reach the crops. And there are even  

completely mobile PV systems like this one from  US company Tracker Sled, providing plug-and-play  

style modularity and mobility regardless of what  type of terrain or topography it's deployed on.  

Despite the fact that the basic principles of APV  have been known for about four decades now, the  

industry is still young, and it's only recently  started to evolve. Research is ongoing to find  

the best ways to adapt the system for producing  as many types of fruit and vegetables as possible,  

and clearly more work needs to be done to ensure  it's economically viable on a global scale,  

but agrivoltaics do look very promising and the  technology could play a major role in diffusing  

the current conflict between agricultural  land owners and solar developers especially  

in higher populated countries where space is  at a premium. Now I'm hoping there may be some  

folks watching this who have direct experience  of working with one of these systems. If you do,  

or if you have other comments and observations  that you think would be constructive and helpful,  

then dive down to the comments section  below and leave your thoughts there.  

That's it for this week though.  A big 'thank you', as always,  

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