Why agrivoltaic technologies are a winning combination
The success of a growing number of countries around the world with agrivoltaic technology, or locating solar panels on farms, a topic I have written about before, suggests this could be a win-win formula, particularly for the developing world.
“Harvesting the sun twice”, a €1.6 million research project by the University of Sheffield in East Africa, has made great progress in growing a range of crops under solar panels. In Kenya, a country where sunshine is abundant but where production stresses do not allow land to be devoted to a single use and where rainfall is scarce, adapting solar farms to allow cultivation is proving a boon.
Growing crops under solar panels means placing the latter several meters above the ground, with a lower density that allows more space between them, and combined with rainwater collection systems for irrigation. This approach, although common in France, Germany, the United States and Japan, has yet to be fully evaluated in the southern hemisphere.
