A match made in heaven

[SpaceBus]

A farm in Germany grows hops under solar panels. Although agrivoltaics are not new, I think even the staunchest climate change denier can get behind a project like this. The increase in productivity is amazing.

 

[peakbagger]

My guess is the economics are tough to hang panels quite high up in the air to shade hops.

 

[begreen]

There may be some economies of scale for this large solar park. It must be working out well or incentivized. He is planning to set up another solar park 10 times the size of this current 32-acre test plot.

 

[woodgeek]

I think agrivoltaics are interesting, but given the low solar resource in Germany to begin with, and the very high price paid for solar kWh there, it is not clear the economics would work elsewhere....

I reckon that as utility solar scales, the revenue in cents/kWh from the solar will drop substantially.

Still, its either this, gravel under the panels (for brownfields?), or grass and sheep? And we already determined that no one wants to eat sheep except Ashful.

 

[StoveInNH]

Of course they're growing hops under solar panels in Germany.

Love the ingenuity!

 

[semipro]

Still, its either this, gravel under the panels (for brownfields?), or grass and sheep?

PVs and sheep is interesting. The pairing seems mutually beneficial. One provides shade and shelter, and the other keeps the vegetation down without the use of machinery that costs time/money and may create damage.

 

[peakbagger]

Germany has had some significant incentives for various renewable efforts over the years. It became a big problem at one point that the incentives funded by ratepayers and the government were unsustainable to the point where the incentive programs had to be changed after the fact. Spain experienced the same issue; they over incentivized the renewable market to the point where they nearly bankrupted the government. I expect some of the pain was offset by the war in Ukraine's impact of on the European's energy markets but there are lots of things that can be done if someone else is paying the bills. The state of Maine just over incentivized solar with developers rushing in from all over to get in on the gravy train and have just realized that consumers will be paying double digit rate increases for several years that will be going into developers pockets. They are proposing to change the law.

Working with a firm previously that was in renewable energy marketing in Massachusetts I kept my ear out for various incentive programs and Mass is somewhat infamous for changing incentive rules to support changing policy goals. When the state heard complaints about solar farms eating up open spaces and the remnants of farmland in Mass, they changed the rules to make it more lucrative to combine agricultural with PV panels. There is lots of money out there for research and pilot programs to come up with that combinations that allow a solar developer to site their panels. Sure the farmers may think they are doing a good thing but ultimately some solar developer is in the background figuring out how much money they are going to make it by "farmwashing" the solar array.

 

[EbS-P]

I’ve grown hops. (Made a beer with wheat grown on our farm and hops from the garden. ) the only way the makes sense is if 1) you don’t have much land
2) you get to sell carbon credits
3) you don’t live in wind prone areas
Because 4)hops grow really tall and have specific harvesting needs when they have harvested.

 

[EbS-P]

If you haven’t seen how they are harvested.