Using vertically mounted bifacial modules allows for more arable land. And if you don’t know what bifacial solar panels are, they can collect solar energy from both sides of the panel. This type of installation would work particularly well in areas that suffer from wind erosion, since the structures reduce wind speeds which can help protect the land and crops grown there. The bifacial panels also can generate more power per square meter than traditional single faced panels and don’t require any moving parts. Then there’s also the option of mounting panels on stilts, which allows farming machinery to pass underneath. In this design you have to maintain a certain clearance between rows to protect the stilts from the machinery, so there is a modest arable land surface loss, usually 3-10%.
2022-09-14: A similar thought process is to combine solar with dams.
Utilizing even small tracts of water can yield outsized benefits. EDP’s Alqueva array, for instance, takes up just 0.016% of the reservoir total surface area. The relative footprint is even smaller when taking into account the reduced need for transmission infrastructure, as the project can plug into the dam’s pre-existing lines.
Moreover, panels and water can have a symbiotic relationship. Modeling the effects of floating panels on water reservoirs found that floating solar panels could reduce evaporation of the water beneath them by 42%. Conversely, solar panels lose generating capacity as they heat up, and the water helps keep panels cool — and 10% more efficient.
2023-06-26: Luminescent Solar Concentrators strike a good balance of energy / agricultural performance.
The idea of Agri-LSC is to allow visible light that crops use for photosynthesis to pass through the panel, while capturing wavelengths of light that are unusable for plants, like infrared and ultraviolet, and converting them into electricity or even transforming them to aid with crop growth. UbiGro is a transparent film that implements a method of LSCs to increase yield for everything from strawberries to cannabis by 20%. They recently teamed up with the solar module company Heliene to add UbiGro film to solar panels, simultaneously generating electricity from low light while aiming to increase plant yield.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 