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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday November 29 2017, @11:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the shady-way-of-making-money dept.

Raising a bumper crop of electrons?

Until now, acreage was designated for either photovoltaics or photosynthesis, that is, to generate electricity or grow crops. An agrophotovoltaics (APV) pilot project near Lake Constance, however, has now demonstrated that both uses are compatible. Dual use of land is resource efficient, reduces competition for land and additionally opens up a new source of income for farmers. For one year, the largest APV system in Germany is being tested on the Demeter farm cooperative Heggelbach. In the demonstration project led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, solar modules for electricity production are installed directly above crops covering an area of one third hectare. Now the first solar harvest of power and produce has been collected on both levels.

"The project results from the first year are a complete success: The agrophotovoltaic system proved suitable for the practice and costs as much as a small solar roof system. The crop production is sufficiently high and can be profitably sold on the market," explains Stephan Schindele, project manager of agrophotovoltaics at Fraunhofer ISE.

Why not cover parking lots with solar panels instead? Parked cars do not need to perform photosynthesis.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by coolgopher on Wednesday November 29 2017, @12:17PM (2 children)

    by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday November 29 2017, @12:17PM (#602950)

    Turn the PV installation into rail scaffolding that a new model of combine harvester can hang from, and watch it zip up and down fully powered by the panels above?

    Starting Score:    1  point
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    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 1) by dwilson on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:36AM (1 child)

    by dwilson (2599) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:36AM (#603310) Journal

    Turn the PV installation into rail scaffolding that a new model of combine harvester can hang from, and watch it zip up and down fully powered by the panels above?

    Spoken like a man who has -no idea- how many belts, pulleys, chains, shafts, bearings, and other moving parts a combine harvester has, just waiting for a chance to pile up on you as soon as your attention wanders.

    That's not a slur against you, mind. I wouldn't have believed it myself, before I got to know them. Now I've taken one to bits and put it together, understand it inside and out, and am still convinced the primary principle of operation is FM. That's 'fucking magic', not 'frequency modulation'...

    And that's with the modern, electronics-bountiful models with sensor-automated-everything. Then there's all the oil and lubrication that goes in to preventing said pile-up, plus the -copious- amounts of dust that gets in to everything. Suspend the entire multi-ton mess above the ground, header, feeder-house, cylinder/rotor, sieves and straw-walkers and all? On what sounds like a multi-path routed rail network? Count most farmers right the fuck out.

    Thought I'd consider it if they let me play with whatever DCS or PLC is overseeing the operation. Instrumentation guys love their automation, I won't deny it.

    --
    - D
    • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:44AM

      by coolgopher (1157) on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:44AM (#603338)

      No offense taken at all. My comment was firmly in the realm of "wouldn't if be interesting if...". Suspending multiple tons of equipment seems courageous at the best of times, so if this sort of thing ever happened I suspect it would require a complete re-imagining of harvesting automation.

      Even as someone in the software industry used to dealing with (designing, implementing, etc) complex systems, seeing the intricacies and ingenuity of older purely mechanical machinery leaves me feeling pretty dumb by comparison.