Agriculture Under Photovoltaic Panels

The success achieved in agriculture under the implementation of photovoltaic panels.

Solar energy is evolving in such a way that it tries to improve our day to day, not only by producing renewable energy, but also by improving the yield, in this case, agricultural crops, producing agriculture under photovoltaic panels.

This is what has been proven in the experimental farm of Lake Constance, which is located in Germany. In it, they decided to investigate the optimization of the yield of their crops, trying to use Photovoltaic Energy. This energy increases agricultural production and causes a high level of independence in crops.

How they did it?

The farm installed solar panels 5 meters above ground level. Thus, they left enough space for the cultivated plants to grow and at the same time the cattle could continue to graze. Also, they could continue working under them with their conventional agricultural technology.

This caused, that the shade that produced the photovoltaic panels increased the solar radiation under the panels in a 30% less, nevertheless, the temperature of the ground in spring and in autumn was lower than in the other stations. When the summer arrived, the humidity that this soil had was greater than the rest of the surrounding crops, so that the plants could better withstand the heat and drought of the summer compared to the rest.

In this way, the productivity of the land was increased with 186% per hectare. So it was concluded that photovoltaic systems improved food production while generating clean energy. This potential is very important, especially in areas of low productivity, such as arid areas. This technique is being applied in new places such as China, Vietnam and India. From SOLARNUB we strongly support this initiative and we hope it can be extended to more countries.

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