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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.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:59PM
Heck, 10-20 miles would do me pretty well too. The problem is it's all but impossible to reach even those numbers in any sort of cost-effective manner. The Prius's 3 miles from a roof-mounted panel is a lot more realistic.
The problem is that it's difficult and expensive to make them conform to the curved surfaces of a car. even flexible panels can only curve in one direction - i.e. they can curve around a cylinder, but not a sphere. And getting rid of bidirectional curves is going to cost you a lot more in efficiency than you gain in power. So that means lots of small panels instead, which increases manufacturing costs considerably. You also need more sophisticated (and expensive) power regulation since those panels will all be facing different directions and thus producing different amounts of power.
And then you'd have to always park in the sun to get any benefit - and in the summer that probably means using even more power to cool off your otherwise broiling cabin.
It just makes a lot more sense to put the solar panels in places and orientations that are good for generating power, and then charging your car from those. Unless you're planning a very slow survey of someplace very remote, where you plan to average only a few miles per day across territory where fuel or electricity may be impossible to find.