Picture Courtesy of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Agrivoltaics is the use of land for both agriculture and solar energy generation. It attempts to solve multiple problems at once – increasing renewable energy production, increasing sustainable food production, and preserving land and water resources. There are many benefits, but also significant challenges. Let’s dig a little deeper.
What is agrivoltaics?
Agrivoltaics is defined as the co-location of agricultural and renewable energy production on the same plot of land, allowing land to be used for generating solar energy and food production. It attempts to solve multiple problems at once – increasing renewable energy production, increasing sustainable food production, and preserving land and water resources. It allows farmers to harvest from the sun and from the land. Agrivoltaics can take many forms. Examples are crop production under solar panels, the cultivation of pollinator-friendly plants on solar sites, and livestock grazing on solar sites. Perhaps surprising to some, there are hundreds of sites within Illinois and the United States. You can get more information on these sites by going to an interactive map provided by OpenEI, showing location and other statistics on these sites.
Image Provided by OpenEI
What are the benefits and challenges?
Picture Courtesy of AgriSolar Clearinghouse
Agrivoltaics looks at agriculture and solar energy production as compliments to the other instead of as competitors. By allowing working lands to stay working, agrivoltaic systems could help farms diversify their income.
Potential benefits of agrivoltaics include:
- Increased productivity — agrivoltaics allows productive use of the land beneath solar arrays. In contrast, the land under most large ground-mounted solar installations is deliberately kept free of weeds and plants to reduce maintenance and shading.
- Reduced competition between agriculture and energy — agrivoltaics can also reduce potential competition for land between agricultural and energy uses.
- Increased solar panel efficiency — several studies, including the study linked above, indicate that solar panels work best at lower temperatures. Transpiration, or the movement of water from plants into the atmosphere, cools the air around plants. This means agrivoltaics can improve solar panel efficiency by cooling off the microclimate around solar arrays.
But agrivoltaics has its challenges:
- Requires shade tolerant species — agrivoltaics works best with shade tolerant crops. Lettuce, for example, is a prime candidate for dual use planting. Other crop species adapted to understory growth can also work well, including chiltepin peppers and some types of tomatoes. Cereal grains, on the other hand, prefer full sun and are unlikely to perform as well with agrivoltaics.
- Potential for reduced crop yield — careful crop selection is important for the success of agrivoltaics. Although chiltepin pepper production increased dramatically, jalapeño production declined by 11%. Agrivoltaics can’t be paired with every crop.
- Cost — like many good ideas (think biochar and artificial intelligence), cost is a major challenge. The initial cost of elevated solar panels is significant. Operational costs for maintenance and labor are high. Government financial incentives most likely will be needed.
- Land loss — regardless of the configuration, there will always be some agricultural land loss in an agrivoltaic setup. The amount of loss depends on the panel apparatus and is crop specific.
There is a lot of research currently being done by academia to further understand whether and how agrivoltaics can be viable on a widespread basis. For example, the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture Sustainable Agriculture Systems program selected U of I as the lead institution to study agrivoltaics in a variety of land types and climate scenarios, including Illinois, Colorado, and Arizona. The goal of the project is to maintain crop production, produce renewable energy, and increase farm profitability.
How does it work?
There are three types of agrivoltaics systems: rows of solar arrays with crops planted in between, solar arrays on tall rack mounts with crops planted underneath, and greenhouses with solar arrays on their roofs. Typically, shade tolerant crops like lettuce are used in agrivoltaic systems. In some systems, agrivoltaics includes animal husbandry, beekeeping, or pollinator habitat instead of crops. As shown in the figure below, these three types can be configured in several ways. These configurations can reflect how the systems are planned: land use under pre-existing fixed PV panels and land use under PV panels planned for agrivoltaic system installation.
Various configurations of agrivoltaic systems (Courtesy: National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
Like many things today, there is much talk about how Artificial Intelligence can improve agrivoltaics. AI and Machnine Learning technologies open up a world of possibilities for data analysis and optimization. In conjunction with sensors, these technologies have the potential to optimize agrivoltaic performance by analyzing weather data, crop data, and solar panel data on an ongoing and predictive basis. See this article by Renewable Energy World for further thoughts on this subject.
What does this mean for conservation?
The use of agrivoltaics and conservation are different means of achieving common goals for addressing climate change. Conservation organizations can augment current electricity sources and farming operations with agrivoltaics. Many times, it may help farmers stay profitable and keep the land from being sold for development. Because solar is also removable and not permanent, it provides flexibility to farmers. The Conservation Foundation supports placing solar in agricultural areas and has already installed solar panels at both of its farms/offices in Naperville and Montgomery along with a small wind turbine at the McDonald Farm. Finally, conservation organizations can promote the use of agrivoltaics to help with air pollution, reduction of emissions, and climate change – and perform double harvesting of solar and agriculture.
Ready to work on the future of farming like agrivoltaics? For almost 50 years, The Conservation Foundation has been a thought leader providing education on new and exciting ways of doing conservation and farming and applying them to everyday life. The Conservation Foundation is also a forum for folks to push the envelope and challenge people in their thinking. We are always looking for creative, hard-working people – become a member today!
Feel free to comment on this blog with additional ideas you have on agrivoltaics.
By Steve Stawarz, Oak Brook
DuPage County Advisory Council Member
