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Agrivoltaics: A Sustainable Synergy Between Agriculture and Solar Energy

mercurialtrends.com

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Re: Agrivoltaics: A Sustainable Synergy Between Agriculture and Solar Energy

#61

Post by tuatoru »

Valgrim wrote: post #57
shalmanese wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human time is one of the most expensive resources in farming. Not any more. A combine costs around a million bucks and has a total useful lifespan of about 10,000 hours which is $100 an hour (not counting maintenance and fuel costs which approx doubles this rate) which far exceeds the cost of a human operator. Capital costs exceed labor costs for almost all types of farming these days.

You might check your math here buddy. Sure a combine (which is called that because it does three jobs all at once, reaping, threshing and winnowing) may cost 100$/hr over it's useful lifespan, but it replaces much more than one person (more like 150-300 people), especially when you consider that harvesting is extremely time-sensitive, sometimes in a matter of hours... Edit: after some research and calculations, my es…

Side note: textbooks like to talk about the "amazing" productivity growth in manufacturing, but that's only been something like 6 to 20 times, not 350 - 700 times.

The real story of productivity growth is in agriculture, and it's still going on, with autonomous vehicles and robotics. An amazing world we live in, where the process of growing food was capable of such incredible labor efficiency gains. Imagine if medicine was the same way...

Re: Agrivoltaics: A Sustainable Synergy Between Agriculture and Solar Energy

#62

Post by tuatoru »

samwillis wrote: post #29
Throw73849 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe use illegal cheap labour from another country. Something like feudalism, but more modern!

You joke, but there are a lot of crops that can't easily be machine picked, and probably never will be. Although I'm a proponent for legal safe immigration for sessional work with a route to permanent residency. The lack of legal routes results in unsafe working conditions and modern slavery.

I don't know about never. Strawberry picking robots seem to be in the piloting phase (out of the lab, not yet in mass production). Same with harvesting salad greens, and grape picking. Other fruits and vegetables look like just a matter of time and investment.

As we move down the robotics learning curve, prices will fall to the point where investment for designing blackberry pickers or cherry pickers (for example) is affordable.

Re: Agrivoltaics: A Sustainable Synergy Between Agriculture and Solar Energy

#63

Post by tuatoru »

lpapez wrote: post #32

Agrivoltaics seems like a cool idea but one of the things I rarely ever see mentioned is how chemicals from the panels interact with the crops. Steel can rust and if rust gets washed away into the earth and then the plants... well that cant be beneficial right? And I bet steel is the least toxic element of the panels.

Steel structural members used outdoors are coated, normally with zinc (called galvanizing). You see rust when the galvanizing has been corroded through. Sometimes a zinc + aluminum alloy is used as it lasts longer than pure zinc.

You should be more worried about those elements washing into the soil. But it turns out that zinc is an essential micronutrient (as is iron) and aluminum is a large part of clay soils anyway.

Other components of solar modules, roughly in order of mass:-

- Glass. This is heavily purified and baked soil. Not a problem.

- Silicon. This is the reduced metallic form of dirt, the equivalent of steel compared to rust or iron ore. Rusted silicon is all around anyway.

- Aluminum wires and connectors. Already covered.

- Plastics used to insulate wiring. Here we might have a problem, with microparticles wearing off and entering our food. However, the effects of this are not at all obvious - people are not dying in millions from agricultural plastics, used for example on the ground as weed suppression around strawberry plants. More research is needed.

By comparison with other uses of plastic in agriculture, the scale of this is tiny.

- Copper internal wiring and connectors. Copper has been used for centuries as a crop spray, and it is permitted in nearly all "organic"/"green" farming certifications.

- Silver, in tiny amounts as top conductors on panels. Has antimicrobial properties in certain chemical formulations, but note the "tiny". Almost certainly benign, and if there is enough of it in the soil (well below any possibly toxic level) it will be recovered for re-use.

- Trace amounts of "exotic" elements in the silicon. If these make their way into the soil, it will be in concentrations of parts per trillion, likely far below background levels already in the soil. (Some of these are things like phosphorus which is an essential nutrient anyway.)

Re: Agrivoltaics: A Sustainable Synergy Between Agriculture and Solar Energy

#64

Post by Schroedingersat »

hosh wrote: post #34

This is a specific application of a broader design pattern found in the permaculture world: planting combinations of plants at different canopy layers, ecological functions, and yields. The solar panels would be taking the place of an understory or shrub canopy layer, while there are herbaceous, ground cover, and root zone layers you can work with. While solar panels have an yield useful for humans, it would be even…

The shade can be controlled with tracking panels. Full shade at noon when photosynthesis stops due to heat to preserve water, less at other times.

The PV can also perform a nitrogen fixing role via electrolysis and ammonia production.

On a broader scale it can lead to the land being habitable at all by driving a coal or gas generator out of business.

Not better, but more likely to be deployed.

Re: Agrivoltaics: A Sustainable Synergy Between Agriculture and Solar Energy

#65

Post by Schroedingersat »

mirpetri wrote: post #13

Plants love sun, why would I put them below a panel into shade. Article mentions blueberries which I grow and those which get the sunshine only half of the day (partly in shade) don't have the same sweet taste as other in better sunny spots of my garden.

Your anecdote is definitely better than all of the science showing quality and yield improvements.

Re: Agrivoltaics: A Sustainable Synergy Between Agriculture and Solar Energy

#66

Post by Schroedingersat »

lpapez wrote: post #32

Agrivoltaics seems like a cool idea but one of the things I rarely ever see mentioned is how chemicals from the panels interact with the crops. Steel can rust and if rust gets washed away into the earth and then the plants... well that cant be beneficial right? And I bet steel is the least toxic element of the panels.

That's because it's a purely imaginary problem shills invented.

Vastly higher quantities of toxins and heavy metals come out of the tractor exhaust than will somehow teleport through glass and time-travel from obsolete chemistries.

Re: Agrivoltaics: A Sustainable Synergy Between Agriculture and Solar Energy

#67

Post by Schroedingersat »

newsclues wrote: post #6

Do we have electric tractors? Are they viable given that weight is a serious issue for machinery on fields? Having lived on a rural farm, with solar panels on the barn, if you can use the harvested power on the farm, great, but once you start trying to distribute it, the problems start to show up because rural infrastructure isn't good, and there isn't enough demand in the local grid.

The entire reason it's being done is the 3% of farmland which is sitting directly on interconnect is more than enough for all the solar that is needed and reactionaries keep having a hissy fit at the idea of replacing topsoil destroying and water polluting energy corn with less polluting PV. You can't then turn around and whine that the transmission line is too far away. Just don't build it on the other 97% of the farms.

Re: Agrivoltaics: A Sustainable Synergy Between Agriculture and Solar Energy

#68

Post by Schroedingersat »

tuatoru wrote: post #63
lpapez wrote: post #32

Agrivoltaics seems like a cool idea but one of the things I rarely ever see mentioned is how chemicals from the panels interact with the crops. Steel can rust and if rust gets washed away into the earth and then the plants... well that cant be beneficial right? And I bet steel is the least toxic element of the panels.

Steel structural members used outdoors are coated, normally with zinc (called galvanizing). You see rust when the galvanizing has been corroded through. Sometimes a zinc + aluminum alloy is used as it lasts longer than pure zinc. You should be more worried about those elements washing into the soil. But it turns out that zinc is an essential micronutrient (as is iron) and aluminum is a large part of clay soils anyway…

There is lead too in some, but even if it all somehow teleported out of the module and directly into the soil (as opposed to this never happening) it would be 10% as much as was already in the soil naturally before leaded gasoline was a thing.

Re: Agrivoltaics: A Sustainable Synergy Between Agriculture and Solar Energy

#70

Post by hammyhavoc »

sholladay wrote: post #14

The writing style of this article is very repetitive and drawn out. Maybe AI generated? > Reduced Greenhouse Gas Emissions > Agrivoltaic systems can also help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture. Traditional farming methods rely heavily on fossil fuels for irrigation, transportation, and fertilizer production. These activities contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to cli…

That there isn't an author listed other than the site name should be a giveaway that there's something funny about it.
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