Largest Farm to Grow Crops Under Solar Panels Proves To Be A Bumper Crop For Agrivoltaic Land Use

What I would really love to see is more solar over commercial parking lots.

Most of those parking lots shouldn't exist in the first place. They should be turned into actually-useful space by putting dense, walkable buildings on them, then the solar panels should go on top of that.

There are plenty of crops that have to be tended and harvested by hand: Most green leafy vegetables for example.

This opens those fields to dual use alongside power generation, which might reduce agricultural use of fossil fuels, and provide shade for field workers which is especially dangerous with climate change raising heat levels.

So we need levitating solar panels. Got it.

Solar Power World reports that Namaste selected sophisticated trackers to follow the sun across the sky, and mounted them according to strategically-measured heights and spacing to allow enough sun to reach the crops below. For each row mounted 8-feet off the ground, providing enough room to drive a tractor under, two were mounted at 6-feet.

Now finished, the electricity Kominek’s farm generates is enough to power 300 private homes, 50 of which are now his energy clients—including the city, and the county. Underneath there are tomatoes, turnips, carrots, squash, beets, lettuce, kale, chard, and peppers.

Others have built them over pasture.

Might be a crazy idea but maybe they can just use smaller tractors. I'm not sure if we have the technology to build Smaller tractors. But since they are needed maybe there could be a Lot of R&D to make a tractor that fits under the space available in these installations.

In the future, it would be cool to see the steel frames facilitate rails that equipment could ride on and work the field beneath. Perhaps it could even be moved by water pressure, since similar equipment in the shape of large scale sprinklers already exists.

This might never come to pass, because indoor farming can produce the same amount of some crops and grains as the equivalent of 40x as much land.

Agrivoltaics isn't the golden goose that you read here and there. There are limited sets of applications, and it requires the application of semi permanent structures which heavily impact on the logistics of field management and operations. Also, the efficiency of such plants isn't as high as that of a pure solar farm, whilst potentially reducing the yields. Its a cool tech but not one that can save us.

It depends on the type of supporting structure for the panels. In Germany a company built it tall enough to use their normal farm equipment: Image

I've seen pictures of massive tractors pulling several ploughs side by side in the US, that would most likely not work with this, but there are plenty of solutions for anything on a slightly smaller scale.

The original story from NPR says that they're able to drive their tractor between the panels. It's interesting that the project could essentially be described as an end run around a historic designation though. They put 1.2 MW of solar up, and from reading between the lines it seems that's how they're making money, the farming seems to be much more of a side thing that they're required to do for historic reasons.

It's usually permanent pasture grazing that's mixed with solar panels. Take low value land that doesn't support the use of large equipment, add value with panels and get free shade for livestock.

There's lots of startups making smaller agile AI powered electric robotics for agriculture. Would pair well with a farm like this.

They use robotic equipment mixed with occasional human support. It's possible but it's a high tech farm, quite expensive and thus not open to every farmer. Tractors, even small ones, are quite huge for that kind of farming practice.

The rainwater would fall off the slanted panels and fall onto the plants.

Not an expert, but my gut reaction is not really. The panels themselves are largely glass, aluminum and silicon, with fairly small amounts of doping agents. There are electronics but since they're outside they're largely encased in something, wiring which would be plastic and copper or possibly aluminum, and then the structure itself which is going to be steel and concrete.

Solar panels are significantly more sturdy than one would think given they are essentially a giant piece of glass. They're usually rated to 12mm hail or more, which would normally absolutely devastate a crop. They don't really go bad either they just become less efficient over time. There's no moving parts to wear, no liquids, and in some designs very little in the way of electronics to go bad.

Essentially, I wouldn't be surprised if there would be more harmful contamination from a diesel tractor driving around in the field or from a nearby coal power plant than from any kind of solar array as long as it didn't have like, lead legs or something.

That being said, these kind of projects have been shown a lot but they're unlikely to be used in most large scale farming - they usually interfere with any machines used to plant or harvest, and are only really well suited to a few crops. Parking lots are a much easier target for this type of solar project.

I've heard of the panels burning down making fhe field unsafe for use in the future

most electronics have lead, i think thatd be the main thing .