My brothers farm had an offer by a similar startup with different dimensions but basically the same idea.
Had problems though. First was moving parts. You can not expect a system to last outside with any in them. Budget for the whole affair is tight, large repairs undo the whole endeavour .
Second is crops riping at different speeds below.
Finally practicality of the frame for farming machines . Meaning the dimensions need to adapt to pre-existing machines. And ideally remain upright even if one post gets hit.
Finally honesty regarding erosion ..corn is one of the more erosion prone crops and then having water dumped on specific areas concentrated creates channels fast. So the idea does not work with no crops or erosion crops in rainy areas. There is a reason there is grass below most solar fields.
One good aspect they didn't push is that this is ideal for electro farming. We have hyper effective electric moisture traps now and electro nitrogen fixing- combine that and this can remove one need for driving trucks through.
In all other aspects i see this limited to orchards.
> In all other aspects i see this limited to orchards.
This study is for a very specific region: East Africa (Kenia and Tanzania). Their main problems are too much evaporation, no energy sources, no other sources of food.
I don't see how a solution that might work for a good share of humanity (Africa is huge: Kenya and Tanzania alone have 150 million people) gets dismissed as "limited to orchards" because it can't be used for industrial scale corn crops in my country.
Well, unfortunately "Africa" is only mentioned in the article's title (which got cut to fit into HN's character limit) and not repeated in the article itself.
But I can understand the concern: most agriculture (not only corn) is highly mechanized pretty much everywhere in the world except the poorest countries, so this would be limited to the crops that can't be mechanized.
Or this can be adapted to mechanized crops where it makes sense. Greenhouses where small fragile minihouses of 4x3 meters, made of wood and glass 100 years ago, used only in countries with harsh winters. Nobody in their right mind would use a tractor to work on them. Today they can be seen from the space and are mechanized... where it makes sense to do it. They turned a desert into a huge production of fresh vegetables: https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/08/the-greenhouses-of-alm... .
Agrivoltaics could be something or nothing. But don't dismiss it because it today isn't already perfect for everything. Ten years ago the cost of the panels alone would make this projects 100% infeasible.
Those plastic-foil greenhouses spreading like cancer across the landscape in Spain should be shown (especially up close, where you can better see the dirty tattered foil and the waste they produce) to people who think solar panels or wind turbines are eyesores. I would definitely support replacing those cheapo greenhouses with something more permanent involving solar panels!
I wouldn't sum up the challenges if i would be completely dismissive , i think the potential is there, especially when it comes to in situ fertilizer nitrogenfixing and electro moisture harvesting (the breakthroughs there are insane, from peltier 50ml to condensator 500 ml recently). This is not a attack on the idea, just a lets strengthen this to solve alot of problems .
Vertical bifacial agrivoltaics system are a promising setup that addresses some of your concerns. Most importantly, tractors can easily pass through them.
Another good setup is to combine it while grazing sheep.
Definitely doesn't seem appropriate for cash crops harvested by combine harvester.
Most orchards and vineyards in temperate climates are attempting to maximize solar exposure, so would compete for space with the panels -- and also have their own trellising systems and so I struggle to see a fit there, too.
But I can definitely see the use cases for two places.
Grazing land for some ruminants, especially in hot dry climates. Provide shelter for animals, and shade for grasses.
Vegetables, market garden or even large scale. (e.g. my neighbour grows something like 20 acres of cauliflower and it's all planted and picked by hand.) Many market gardens are using walk-behind / two-wheel tractors (BCS, etc.) which are far more agile and could easily handle moving around panels.
Spill-off / erosion can be dealt with through building swales.
I really don't get the hype around Agrivoltaics at all. It all kind of pivots of the idea that land for Photovoltaics is scarce. Maybe it is in the UK but in the vast majority of the world this is a non sequitur.
Cover the crop in shade cloth, and mount the panels on the ground / roof structures nearby. No need to over complicate things.
> Maybe it is in the UK but in the vast majority of the world this is a non sequitur.
Land near energy demand is scarce almost everywhere. This kind of local generation is ideal and both reduces transmission losses and makes the grid/society more resilient.
Land near energy demand is not scarce almost anywhere. Where "near" means "Within 1000km". And it doesn't need to be near. Transmission lines are cheap and highly efficient infrastructure if you have a sensible process of land tenure (whether via routinized/generous eminent domain, Harberger Taxation, or other means).
Moving electricity is among the cheapest, most efficient industrial processes that exist.
*With all due respect to the Maldives, Gaza, Hong Kong, et cetera
It isn't a theoretical, it's something China is 30+ completed projects deep on. The technology existed decades ago. We just treat infrastructure like it's an impossibility here.
Got to say the shiny and non-rusted transmission pylons in Hebei got me more excited than was probably warranted. I don't think I've seen a shiny pylon before, I guess we mostly just stopped building them decades ago.
On the topic of agriculture I was very impressed by all the polytunnels we spotted from the high speed rail heading north out of Beijing. Every valley, and nook and cranny was full of them.
Took a couple photos of a small town in inner Mongolia that we passed, was amazing seeing green crops in the middle of a Siberian winter.
What you and the GP are discussing are fundamentally different solutions to agrivoltaics. One is inherently decentralised (not only decentralised power generation, but also local nitrogen fixing and reduced water demand) and the other is Just A Better Grid™. Just A Better Grid™ is inherently valuable, but it's not a substitute nor is it in competetion with agrivoltaics.
> I am lazy, I like to start with the low hanging fruit first.
Then you should be looking at agrivoltaics before rooftop, as they are much cheaper in developed countries where the cost of rooftop solar is dominated by installation cost.
I'm not sure that holds true in a local sense. I have an all electric 8 unit apartment building.
I have been tracking the electric usage and it is currently growing but only because of the addition of 2 EVs.
I believe the the usage of actual electricity for the building to level off after EVs become the norm.
I expect my electric usage to drop after adding a solar thermal collector to replace a portion of the electricity used for heating.
True. Although it is self-sustaining and doesn't require outside production. I also distinguished between electric usage and thermal collection to satisfy overall energy needs.
I guess I'm trying to point out that on an individual level power usage may have a maximum. This might not hold true for commercial ambitions.
Sure there are reasonable limits. Where, is another matter. For example, I can not imagine a reasonable use-case for 1MW power-line per single apartment.
The energy needs of a local residential area will just increase in response to the economically available power, but that's irrelevant as we're talking about agrivoltaics and farms use enormous amounts of energy.
I'm excited about it because its a combination of many things I truly enjoy doing and get a lot of pleasure from - harvesting energy, growing food, seeing life in equilibrium.
The integrated growth-stands with full-spectrum solar -> plant -> fish -> soil process is really, really appealing. Healthier food, energy harvested in neat ways. If I can get carrots and radishes and salads from the same device that charges my cell phone in the next year or so, I'll be a happier human for sure.
Yes, every season I grow ~20kg of vegetables on a 15m^2 balcony (tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, celery, various herbs). They are grown vertically on a trellis system, using 11 liter hydroponic "bato" buckets and recycled/reused perlite (sterilized). Nothing fancy.
The main energy input is the chemical fertilizer. Electricity to run pumps/valves etc is very minimal and probably amounts to 5-6 KWh over the season. I use synthetic fertilizers but avoid insecticides/fungicides, instead opting to use biocontrols (shout out to Koppert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFPkAQUfYvo).
The future of agriculture (excluding cereal crops, which I dream might be replaced by synthetic starches one day) probably looks something similar to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_pR_HihCVo
Yes you could easily combine solar panels and poly-tunnels for example. We have the potential over the next few years to make everything work so well but instead the US seems to be cutting cyber funding.
Just read an article about one of these in the local newspaper.
They currently have some challenges with bureaucracy, at least in Austria:
Given that it is an industrial facility it has to be secured from unauthorized access, but as it is a field, it has to be accessable to small animals. So now it is fenced with barbed wire on the top but it's open at the bottom.
Not the case in Germany. Photovoltaic installations on agricultural plots are routine, in certain cases (I.e. the plot is next to a motorway) you don’t even need a planning/building permit, as long as the installation conforms to established building practices. Agrivoltaics is still a niche practice, but not because of bureaucratic concerns.
Growing crops for fuel is so absolutely ridiculously inefficient it's amazing anyone does it at all (It's usually not even energy-positive: the only way it makes sense is if you want to make sure you have excess food production and have something you can do with the waste).
The only case where it might be viable is burning crop waste; stems of grain and maize, for example. The UK runs Drax on (imported! in oil burning ships!) sawmill waste, but that's greenwashing to me.
It definitely is. Besides that, Drax doesn't only run on waste products (that's what they'd like to make us believe), they mostly run on freshly logged timber.
And even if it only was waste that's burned, it's IMHO incredibly stupid. We should be happy about every single gram of CO2 that's stored somewhere and use this "waste" for building insulation, paper production, soil revitalization or simply bury it.
Burning simply shouldn't happen when we have way better, cheaper, more efficient, more environmentally friendly methods of producing heat and electricity.
Oats don't like hot dry areas, such as kenya in summer/dry season.
plus, burning oats is really fucking expensive, the chaff is a reasonable feed, and the straw is good bedding/binder for building stuff.
Burning for power is really a poor use, especially as it needs compressing into bricks first. Plus you only get a tiny bit of energy once a year, compared to ~1kwhr per panel per day. (depends on panel size and positioning etc etc )
Sorry, how is this better? The whole path of [grow oats -> maintain steam power plant -> ship and burn oats] seems much harder to me than using solar cells?
so called agrivoltaics will have certain very limited applications, and putting pv panels on the many very large agricultural buildings roofs, is much easier to integrate.
A big risk with "agrivoltaics" is that they will
in fact destroy the agricultural potential of land
and then become the only source of income for the "farmers" , therby converting protected agricultural land, into purely industrial uses.
Putting solar pv over canals is a better option, it reduces evaporation, while providing a cooler operating enviroment for the panels, in places that have no real constraints with developing them further.Also resevoirs can benifit/help in the same way with floating solar pv.
> putting pv panels on the many very large agricultural buildings roofs, is much easier to integrate
for industrial farming yes. This study is aimed at subsistence farmers in africa. ones that don't have much mechanisation.
> will in fact destroy the agricultural potential of land
Given that this study highlights the water conservation features of agrivoltaics, I'd say it has a greater chance of stopping salinisation of agricultural land from over irrigation.
> Also resevoirs can benifit/help in the same way with floating solar pv.
again, this is aimed at african farmers with limited infrastructure. this would be the stepping stone to getting cheap electricity
My brothers farm had an offer by a similar startup with different dimensions but basically the same idea.
Had problems though. First was moving parts. You can not expect a system to last outside with any in them. Budget for the whole affair is tight, large repairs undo the whole endeavour .
Second is crops riping at different speeds below.
Finally practicality of the frame for farming machines . Meaning the dimensions need to adapt to pre-existing machines. And ideally remain upright even if one post gets hit.
Finally honesty regarding erosion ..corn is one of the more erosion prone crops and then having water dumped on specific areas concentrated creates channels fast. So the idea does not work with no crops or erosion crops in rainy areas. There is a reason there is grass below most solar fields.
One good aspect they didn't push is that this is ideal for electro farming. We have hyper effective electric moisture traps now and electro nitrogen fixing- combine that and this can remove one need for driving trucks through.
In all other aspects i see this limited to orchards.
> In all other aspects i see this limited to orchards.
This study is for a very specific region: East Africa (Kenia and Tanzania). Their main problems are too much evaporation, no energy sources, no other sources of food.
I don't see how a solution that might work for a good share of humanity (Africa is huge: Kenya and Tanzania alone have 150 million people) gets dismissed as "limited to orchards" because it can't be used for industrial scale corn crops in my country.
Well, unfortunately "Africa" is only mentioned in the article's title (which got cut to fit into HN's character limit) and not repeated in the article itself.
But I can understand the concern: most agriculture (not only corn) is highly mechanized pretty much everywhere in the world except the poorest countries, so this would be limited to the crops that can't be mechanized.
Or this can be adapted to mechanized crops where it makes sense. Greenhouses where small fragile minihouses of 4x3 meters, made of wood and glass 100 years ago, used only in countries with harsh winters. Nobody in their right mind would use a tractor to work on them. Today they can be seen from the space and are mechanized... where it makes sense to do it. They turned a desert into a huge production of fresh vegetables: https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/08/the-greenhouses-of-alm... .
Agrivoltaics could be something or nothing. But don't dismiss it because it today isn't already perfect for everything. Ten years ago the cost of the panels alone would make this projects 100% infeasible.
Those plastic-foil greenhouses spreading like cancer across the landscape in Spain should be shown (especially up close, where you can better see the dirty tattered foil and the waste they produce) to people who think solar panels or wind turbines are eyesores. I would definitely support replacing those cheapo greenhouses with something more permanent involving solar panels!
I wouldn't sum up the challenges if i would be completely dismissive , i think the potential is there, especially when it comes to in situ fertilizer nitrogenfixing and electro moisture harvesting (the breakthroughs there are insane, from peltier 50ml to condensator 500 ml recently). This is not a attack on the idea, just a lets strengthen this to solve alot of problems .
Vertical bifacial agrivoltaics system are a promising setup that addresses some of your concerns. Most importantly, tractors can easily pass through them.
Another good setup is to combine it while grazing sheep.
Or hayfields.
Definitely doesn't seem appropriate for cash crops harvested by combine harvester.
Most orchards and vineyards in temperate climates are attempting to maximize solar exposure, so would compete for space with the panels -- and also have their own trellising systems and so I struggle to see a fit there, too.
But I can definitely see the use cases for two places.
Grazing land for some ruminants, especially in hot dry climates. Provide shelter for animals, and shade for grasses.
Vegetables, market garden or even large scale. (e.g. my neighbour grows something like 20 acres of cauliflower and it's all planted and picked by hand.) Many market gardens are using walk-behind / two-wheel tractors (BCS, etc.) which are far more agile and could easily handle moving around panels.
Spill-off / erosion can be dealt with through building swales.
I really don't get the hype around Agrivoltaics at all. It all kind of pivots of the idea that land for Photovoltaics is scarce. Maybe it is in the UK but in the vast majority of the world this is a non sequitur.
Cover the crop in shade cloth, and mount the panels on the ground / roof structures nearby. No need to over complicate things.
> Maybe it is in the UK but in the vast majority of the world this is a non sequitur.
Land near energy demand is scarce almost everywhere. This kind of local generation is ideal and both reduces transmission losses and makes the grid/society more resilient.
Land near energy demand is not scarce almost anywhere. Where "near" means "Within 1000km". And it doesn't need to be near. Transmission lines are cheap and highly efficient infrastructure if you have a sensible process of land tenure (whether via routinized/generous eminent domain, Harberger Taxation, or other means).
Moving electricity is among the cheapest, most efficient industrial processes that exist.
*With all due respect to the Maldives, Gaza, Hong Kong, et cetera
And don't be sleeping on the potential of UHVDC transmission.
This is like the potential of High-Speed Rail.
It isn't a theoretical, it's something China is 30+ completed projects deep on. The technology existed decades ago. We just treat infrastructure like it's an impossibility here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...
Was in Northern China recently,
Got to say the shiny and non-rusted transmission pylons in Hebei got me more excited than was probably warranted. I don't think I've seen a shiny pylon before, I guess we mostly just stopped building them decades ago.
On the topic of agriculture I was very impressed by all the polytunnels we spotted from the high speed rail heading north out of Beijing. Every valley, and nook and cranny was full of them.
Took a couple photos of a small town in inner Mongolia that we passed, was amazing seeing green crops in the middle of a Siberian winter.
I believe this was a farm using recycled water to grow cut flowers https://imgur.com/a/kw1IDZ3
What you and the GP are discussing are fundamentally different solutions to agrivoltaics. One is inherently decentralised (not only decentralised power generation, but also local nitrogen fixing and reduced water demand) and the other is Just A Better Grid™. Just A Better Grid™ is inherently valuable, but it's not a substitute nor is it in competetion with agrivoltaics.
To realise the benefits of local generation, near means on the order of 1,000m, not km.
Roofs near energy demand is plentiful almost everywhere.
I am lazy, I like to start with the low hanging fruit first.
> I am lazy, I like to start with the low hanging fruit first.
Then you should be looking at agrivoltaics before rooftop, as they are much cheaper in developed countries where the cost of rooftop solar is dominated by installation cost.
Rooftop photovoltaic can (and will) cover local needs. Bigger issue is local energy storage (eg. community batteries).
This is absurd. There's no limit to energy needs - they only grow.
I'm not sure that holds true in a local sense. I have an all electric 8 unit apartment building. I have been tracking the electric usage and it is currently growing but only because of the addition of 2 EVs. I believe the the usage of actual electricity for the building to level off after EVs become the norm. I expect my electric usage to drop after adding a solar thermal collector to replace a portion of the electricity used for heating.
> I expect my electric usage to drop after adding a solar thermal collector to replace a portion of the electricity used for heating.
Well, that's just harvesting more solar energy, not reducing your energy needs.
True. Although it is self-sustaining and doesn't require outside production. I also distinguished between electric usage and thermal collection to satisfy overall energy needs.
I guess I'm trying to point out that on an individual level power usage may have a maximum. This might not hold true for commercial ambitions.
Sure there are reasonable limits. Where, is another matter. For example, I can not imagine a reasonable use-case for 1MW power-line per single apartment.
I was required to wire each unit with 150kW panel. The original 1931 service was 240 x 200 Amps which I upgraded to 240 x 800 Amps in 2018.
I posted the best image I could of the original 1931 schematic which has 9 circuits for 5,000 sqft school.
It's the first image in this slide show.
https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B2dGIcgc2GugpW3
There's nothing absurd about local generation being able to fulfill/contribute to a large portion of the energy needs of a local residential area.
People with residential solar do it all the time with payoff in less than 10 years.
The energy needs of a local residential area will just increase in response to the economically available power, but that's irrelevant as we're talking about agrivoltaics and farms use enormous amounts of energy.
Do you have your own personal garden?
I'm excited about it because its a combination of many things I truly enjoy doing and get a lot of pleasure from - harvesting energy, growing food, seeing life in equilibrium.
The integrated growth-stands with full-spectrum solar -> plant -> fish -> soil process is really, really appealing. Healthier food, energy harvested in neat ways. If I can get carrots and radishes and salads from the same device that charges my cell phone in the next year or so, I'll be a happier human for sure.
> Do you have your own personal garden?
Yes, every season I grow ~20kg of vegetables on a 15m^2 balcony (tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, celery, various herbs). They are grown vertically on a trellis system, using 11 liter hydroponic "bato" buckets and recycled/reused perlite (sterilized). Nothing fancy.
The main energy input is the chemical fertilizer. Electricity to run pumps/valves etc is very minimal and probably amounts to 5-6 KWh over the season. I use synthetic fertilizers but avoid insecticides/fungicides, instead opting to use biocontrols (shout out to Koppert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFPkAQUfYvo).
The future of agriculture (excluding cereal crops, which I dream might be replaced by synthetic starches one day) probably looks something similar to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_pR_HihCVo
Yes you could easily combine solar panels and poly-tunnels for example. We have the potential over the next few years to make everything work so well but instead the US seems to be cutting cyber funding.
I've read an article with vertical bifacial panels between long hemispherical greenhouses to catch reflections.
Photovoltaic "fences" are one of those bizarre ideas that might actually make sense.
Just read an article about one of these in the local newspaper.
They currently have some challenges with bureaucracy, at least in Austria:
Given that it is an industrial facility it has to be secured from unauthorized access, but as it is a field, it has to be accessable to small animals. So now it is fenced with barbed wire on the top but it's open at the bottom.
Not the case in Germany. Photovoltaic installations on agricultural plots are routine, in certain cases (I.e. the plot is next to a motorway) you don’t even need a planning/building permit, as long as the installation conforms to established building practices. Agrivoltaics is still a niche practice, but not because of bureaucratic concerns.
There's a simpler way: you may burn oats and generate heat/power without relying on problematic solar panels. It's already quite common.
Growing crops for fuel is so absolutely ridiculously inefficient it's amazing anyone does it at all (It's usually not even energy-positive: the only way it makes sense is if you want to make sure you have excess food production and have something you can do with the waste).
Comparing the landuse efficiency of corn-based biomass vs PV is about 60-75x.
It just doesn't make any sense at all to use crops for energy production.
The only case where it might be viable is burning crop waste; stems of grain and maize, for example. The UK runs Drax on (imported! in oil burning ships!) sawmill waste, but that's greenwashing to me.
It definitely is. Besides that, Drax doesn't only run on waste products (that's what they'd like to make us believe), they mostly run on freshly logged timber.
Most of it, imported from the US: https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Drax-brie...
And even if it only was waste that's burned, it's IMHO incredibly stupid. We should be happy about every single gram of CO2 that's stored somewhere and use this "waste" for building insulation, paper production, soil revitalization or simply bury it.
Burning simply shouldn't happen when we have way better, cheaper, more efficient, more environmentally friendly methods of producing heat and electricity.
Oats don't like hot dry areas, such as kenya in summer/dry season.
plus, burning oats is really fucking expensive, the chaff is a reasonable feed, and the straw is good bedding/binder for building stuff.
Burning for power is really a poor use, especially as it needs compressing into bricks first. Plus you only get a tiny bit of energy once a year, compared to ~1kwhr per panel per day. (depends on panel size and positioning etc etc )
Sorry, how is this better? The whole path of [grow oats -> maintain steam power plant -> ship and burn oats] seems much harder to me than using solar cells?
What's problematic about solar panels?
There's a reasonable amount of waste biomass generated by farms that can be used in various ways without growing it specifically for that use.
People just like using "problematic" as a content-free slur that's acceptable in "progressive" circles that bypasses critical thinking.
Mainly recycling.
What does “problematic” even mean here?
No, EROEI for this is just bad if not negative. Also you do not produce any food.
so called agrivoltaics will have certain very limited applications, and putting pv panels on the many very large agricultural buildings roofs, is much easier to integrate. A big risk with "agrivoltaics" is that they will in fact destroy the agricultural potential of land and then become the only source of income for the "farmers" , therby converting protected agricultural land, into purely industrial uses. Putting solar pv over canals is a better option, it reduces evaporation, while providing a cooler operating enviroment for the panels, in places that have no real constraints with developing them further.Also resevoirs can benifit/help in the same way with floating solar pv.
> putting pv panels on the many very large agricultural buildings roofs, is much easier to integrate
for industrial farming yes. This study is aimed at subsistence farmers in africa. ones that don't have much mechanisation.
> will in fact destroy the agricultural potential of land
Given that this study highlights the water conservation features of agrivoltaics, I'd say it has a greater chance of stopping salinisation of agricultural land from over irrigation.
> Also resevoirs can benifit/help in the same way with floating solar pv.
again, this is aimed at african farmers with limited infrastructure. this would be the stepping stone to getting cheap electricity