Skip to main content

No need to clear new land for solar power. Panels can coexist with agriculture, and even help it since many crops thrive in partial shade and/or benefit from water retention under the panels.

“Maize is grown by about 50% of farmers in Tanzania. Maize is also a sun loving plant. So the fact that we had an 11% yield increase in maize [under solar panel arrays] is a phenomenal result,” he said.

#solar #renewables #agriculture https://apnews.com/article/climate-beer-solar-panels-hops-germany-ee3d00a1877837eb85053335e3b68a00

Hops for beer flourish under solar panels. They're not the only crop thriving in the shade.

A farm in Bavaria is covering its hops with solar panels, providing electricity to 250 households and shading the plants from the increasingly scorching summer heat in the process. Solar panels atop crops has been gaining traction in recent years.
MATTHIAS SCHRADER (AP News)
#agriculture #Solar #renewables
in reply to Osma A

Elena ``of Valhalla''
Elena ``of Valhalla''
• •
@Osma A OTOH, afaik there are a lot of cases where what look like solar panels taking over agricultural land and making it non-usable are actually cases of agricultural land that is being rotated with periods of rest, and this way will still provide some revenue (hopefully for the farmers), but the panels will be moved elsewhere in the next season / year.
@Osma A
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

Osma A
Osma A
• •
Have not heard of that happening, and moving the foundations, supports, inverters, wiring, grid connection etc is a lot of work beyond the panels.

OTOH, I definitely have heard of forest/woodland being cleared for solar installations. While it may be "just" planted fiber wood growth, even those take decades to mature.
in reply to Osma A

Elena ``of Valhalla''
Elena ``of Valhalla''
• •
@Osma A afaik some of the infrastructure (grid connection, mostly) is placed in such a way that it can be used in the various fields that are being rotated. And I've seen fields where the supports etc. looked pretty minimalist, somewhat close to the ground, so they didn't look that hard to move around (i.e. doable in a few days, not doable in a couple of hours, of course).

They weren't big plants (nor big fields), of course. European sized :D

UGH for forest / woodlands, however: that's indeed quite bad.
@Osma A

This website uses cookies to recognize revisiting and logged in users. You accept the usage of these cookies by continue browsing this website.

⇧