Agrivoltaics

Sunfarming is taking the lead when it comes to agriPV project development and investment in Germany. And in South Africa, Sunfarming’s Food and Energy and the Food Education Energy Development (FEED) program has developed two unique concepts through which it can share its agriPV expertise. pv magazine sat down with Sunfarming director of international projects, Edith Brasche, to talk about the company’s South African projects.

Created by a Dutch group of companies and research institutions, the mobile solar system may also be combined with an electrolyzer for hydrogen generation. Two prototypes are currently being tested by a farmer and a research institute in the Netherlands.

A new report by IEEFA proposes enhancing India’s electric vehicle (EV) adoption strategy as an alternative to further promotion of blended fuel, given the land-use efficiency gap between renewable energy generation for EV charging and cultivation for ethanol blending in fuels. Matching the distance driven by electric vehicles (EVs) charged from one hectare of solar generation would require ethanol derived from up to 251 hectares of sugar cane or 187 hectares of maize, it estimated.

Bidders have until April 19 to lodge their interest in setting up a 5MW (AC) grid-connected agrivoltaic plant combining solar with saffron farming in the Pulwama district.

March 17 is the deadline to bid for setting up grid-connected solar power plants in sizes of 0.5MW to 2MW on uncultivable land for selling the power to the State Discom.   

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi have developed solar towers that can be moved from one place to another and can generate 20-30% more power while requiring only 50-60% space compared to conventional mounting setups.

Given 60% of India’s land area is farmed, agrivoltaics (pairing solar with farming) holds special promise for the nation to accelerate its transition to clean energy. However, the roll-out of agrivoltaics in India cannot proceed without addressing the various policy and regulatory challenges. 

BayWa r.e. and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE have built a 258 kW agrivoltaic system that hosts apple cultivation under four different crop protection systems. The system utilizes agrivoltaic technology with permanent, light-permeable PV modules that block rain, and tracking PV module tech that blocks rain only if necessary.

India will require large swaths of land for the huge expansion of renewable energy capacity over the coming decades. The energy transition requires planning for proper siting of these plants and solutions like agrivoltaics, distributed energy systems, and offshore wind to reduce land-use conflicts.

The agrivoltaic project was commissioned for Gro Solar Energy under the state government’s Mukhyamantri Saur Krishi Vahini Yojana. It uses 30,300 Panasonic solar modules and string inverters, and occupies a land area of 50 acres.