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Conclusions
Published in Jennifer F. Sklarew, Building Resilient Energy Systems, 2023
Integrative solutions to risk can mitigate uncertainty and leverage energy system interconnectedness with other systems. For instance, in addition to deploying solar power on contaminated farmland, public-private partnerships could enable agrivoltaics on operational farms. Agrivoltaics involves the deployment of solar panels on agricultural land, enabling emissions-free, on-site electricity production to power irrigation pumps and farm equipment, while also shading water-stressed plants and grazing animals. Institutional support for agrivoltaics in the form of tax incentives and regulatory frameworks can promote its expansion. In Japan, the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO,) a METI subsidiary, released guidelines on design and construction of co-location of solar panels with crops and livestock in late 2021 (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, 2021; Bellini, 2021).
Uneven environmental impacts and contrasting returns
Published in Walter Amedzro St-Hilaire, Agribusiness Economics, 2022
Certain manufacturing processes are currently being researched to reduce the carbon footprint of PV systems, particularly during the silicon purification stage, as well as during the stages that require the use of gases and chemicals to manufacture the photovoltaic cells, generating a certain amount of waste. The environmental impact of photovoltaics cannot be reduced to the carbon footprint, which is already higher than that of wind power. Indeed, ground-based photovoltaic power plants require a large surface area, which can lead to a conflict of use with agricultural or forest land. In particular, it should be pointed out that the deforestation of a forest, where CO2 is stored, for a ground-mounted solar power plant project could have a negative impact in terms of the carbon balance. It should be emphasised that if the photovoltaic production capacities are integrated into the buildings (agricultural sheds, greenhouses, etc.), there is no conflict of use: therefore, this is the type of solution that should be developed. Moreover, it is necessary to plan for a third of the annual installations (in terms of installed capacity) to be on buildings. Dynamic agrivoltaic farming opens up a very promising avenue by reconciling agricultural production and the production of renewable energy.
Dynamics of a Sustainable Energy Transition
Published in Muhammad Asif, Handbook of Energy Transitions, 2023
The success of renewables has been propelled by technological advancements, economy of scale, and supportive policies. Solar and wind power industries are massively benefiting from the scientific and engineering advancements. Solar PV cells, for example, are becoming more efficient and reliable. Concentrated solar PV cells, as shown in Figure 1.3 [22] have achieved efficiency figures of over 40%. Figure 1.4 shows the advancements in the PV cell technology [23] The progress of renewable technologies, especially solar energy systems, is significantly being helped by their broadening application domains. The building sector has been a vital area of application for solar PV and solar water heating systems [24–28]. PV systems are also being installed over agricultural farms, termed as Agrivoltaics. For PV and wind turbines, the issue of low power density is being addressed by off-shore applications. Application of PV on water bodies, that is, lakes, canals, rivers, and oceans, termed as floating PV, is becoming popular with the added advantage of higher system efficiency. Wind turbines are witnessing improvements both at the manufacturing and installation ends. Besides improvements in aerodynamic designs, advanced and sophisticated materials are helping develop larger, lighter, and stronger wind blades. These developments have enabled wind turbines grow rapidly in size, as shown in Figure 1.5. The off-shore application of wind turbines has significantly boosted the capacity factor. Within a couple of decades, larger and more sophisticated wind turbines and better site selection have resulted in an increase in the average annual capacity factor from 20%–30% to 40%–50%. Some off-shore wind turbines are now claiming to have a capacity factor over 60%.
Integrating organic photovoltaics (OPVs) into greenhouses: electrical performance and lifetimes of OPVs
Published in International Journal of Sustainable Energy, 2022
Esther Magadley, Meir Teitel, Ragheb Kabha, Mohamad Dakka, Maayan Friman Peretz, Shay Ozer, Asher Levi, Hagai Yasuor, Murat Kacira, Rebekah Waller, Ibrahim Yehia
Greenhouse agriculture addresses both global water and food security, by greatly increasing annual crop yields whilst reducing water consumption (Cook and Calvin 2005). However, in many cases, greenhouse agriculture remains highly energy intensive due to the additional energy needed to control its microclimate (Bot et al. 2005). Agrivoltaics provides an opportunity to offset the large energy consumption with renewable energy and a dual land use, thereby turning greenhouse agriculture into an environmentally sustainable solution (Yano and Cossu 2019; Hassanien, Li, and Lin 2016; Wang et al. 2017; Yano et al. 2009). Although the integration of silicon photovoltaics (PV) into greenhouses have previously been studied (Yano et al. 2009; Yano et al. 2010; Campiotti et al. 2011; Pérez-Alonso et al. 2012), semi-transparent organic photovoltaics (OPV) may be potentially a better suited solution for greenhouse applications, as they allow some light to be transmitted into the greenhouse and their absorption spectra can be tuned to mainly absorb light not needed for crop growth allowing the remaining light to reach the plants (Emmott et al. 2015; Liu et al. 2019). In addition, the polyethylene substrate material used in OPVs is similar to the covers of polyethylene-covered greenhouses, facilitating their integration into plastic-covered greenhouses. Other advantages of OPVs are that they are lightweight, flexible, have a low carbon footprint, are easily recycled/decommissioned and are predicted to have lower production costs than silicon PVs when mass produced (Carlé et al. 2017; Mulligan et al. 2014; Chatzisideris et al. 2017).