by Clinton Griffiths (AgWeb) The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) believes solar could provide up to 40% of the country’s electricity by the year 2035. However, it’s estimated roughly 5.7 million acres of land will be needed.
“While that amount is a tiny fraction of U.S. land (0.3%) in the lower 48 states, it would need to be located near power transmission facilities and could add to recent encroachment on agricultural lands from other sources,” explains Stephanie Mercier, an agricultural policy consultant.
The DOE is pushing hard to help make it a reality. For instance, it just announced an investment of $1.3 billion dollars for six state transmission line projects aimed at bolstering the electric grid. Those projects connect Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico and also link New Hampshire and Vermont to Canada.
...
“Millions of acres may be needed for solar energy production going into the next 20 to 30 years and some of that land, not all of it, could be farmland,” says Matt O’Neal, a professor in the department of plant pathology, entomology and microbiology at Iowa State and the Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture. “That worries some people, especially those farmers in the Midwest.”
That’s why more research is going into how to continue agriculture below and around solar panels — also known as agrivoltaics.
“Such research was launched in 1981 by two German scientists, Adolph Goetzberger and Armin Zastrow, who determined that constructing solar panels so they are elevated about 6' above the ground rather than being placed directly on the ground can allow for crops to be cultivated below the solar panel array,” Mercier says.
...
Mercier has found that recent estimates indicate there are currently more than 340 agrivoltaics sites in the U.S., mainly pairing solar with pollinator habitats or small ruminant grazing, such as sheep, across more than 33,000 acres while producing a total of 4.8 gigawatts of solar energy.
“Several agrivoltaic pilot programs, in partnership with mainly European research centers and agencies, are underway on the African continent,” she says.
Mercier adds according to a German research organization, Fraunhofer ISE, in 2022, early results from a project in the north African country of Algeria found that under an agrivoltaic installation there was an increase in yield of potatoes of roughly 16% versus the uncovered field.
“The value of this shade will only increase as average summer temperatures increase due to climate change,” Mercier says. READ MORE
Related articles
- In Colorado, the soil beneath solar panels is ripe for growing crops (Colorado Sun/Planet Forward)
- Agrivoltaics In Action: Evidence Shows Solar Panels Nurture Habitats And Farms, Too (Clean Technica)
- Insect populations flourish in the restored habitats of solar energy facilities (Argonne National Laboratory)
- Has the U.S. caught up with European agrivoltaic deployment? With so much more agricultural real estate than Europe, the United States is building on the body of research and rolling out solar panels on farmland at an impressive rate. (PV Magazine)
- Small-scale solar best for environment but agrivoltaics may be the answer -- A lifecycle analysis finds that although it’s better for the environment to put solar on a roof, a mix of both is needed. (PV Magazine)
- Large-Scale Wind and Solar Developers Concerned About Social Factors Affecting Deployment (North American Clean Energy)
- Solar Panels Spread Across America's Heartland as Farmers Chase Stable Returns -- US farmers are turning to solar power as a buffer against volatile crop prices, and Biden's clean-energy tax incentives are set to boost the trend. (Bloomberg)
Excerpt from Clean Technica: In a press release describing the study, Argonne takes note of the Energy Department’s Solar Futures Study, which estimates that the US will need to devote about 10 million acres of land for utility scale solar development in order to meet its 2050 decarbonization goals.
Coincidentally, practically to the hour that Argonne announced the results of its agrivoltaics study, the Biden-Harris administration announced an ambitious plan to consider opening up 22 million acres of federal public lands in the Western US for solar development.
That sounds mighty good on paper, but as the Argonne team cautions, if the goal is to restore and improve natural habitats, then previously undisturbed land is not particularly the best candidate for agrivoltaic development.
Instead, the Argonne study indicates that marginal farmland would be a better pick. That sounds pretty reasonable. After all, previously farmed land has already suffered the indignity of being stripped of biodiversity in favor of monoculture crops, complete with chemical treatments and other elements of modern industrial farming practices.
“Disturbed lands such as former agricultural fields are ideal locations to hold rows of solar panels compared to lands that have been previously undisturbed,” Argonne affirms.
...
Nevertheless, former mines and other former energy-producing sites can offer additional opportunities for agrivoltaic arrays. One particularly interesting example of agrivoltaics at work on former energy-producing sites is an agrivoltaic prairie restoration project under way at a former nuclear energy site in California.
Still, the Argonne lab anticipates that all else being equal, about 80% of ground-mounted solar development in the coming years could take place on farmland. That makes it all the more important to come up with agrivoltaic solutions.
...
That’s all well and good, but the field of agrivoltaics is rapidly evolving to permit actual farming to take place within the solar arrays, making the whole issue moot.
A couple of examples to cross the CleanTechnica radar are tiltable solar panels that enable heavy farm machinery to pass between rows, and vertical solar panels that double as fencing.
Agrivoltaics could also have the potential to sustain entire agricultural sectors. Massachusetts, for example, is leaning on solar panels to help preserve its beleaguered cranberry industry.
Another interesting example is Vermont, where researchers are exploring the use of agrivoltaics to promote saffron cultivation, in an effort to provide small farmers with a high-value crop while gaining revenue from solar arrays, too.
As for the opposition to rural solar development, we wonder where all these people were when valuable farmland was, and continues to be, permanently taken out of cultivation by sprawling housing developments, corporate parks, fulfillment centers and other forms of non-farm activity. READ MORE
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