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 coolgopher on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:44AM
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.