As part of Berkeley Lab’s Community-Centered Solar Development (CCSD) project, this research set out to explore deep insights and perceptions from large-scale solar (LSS) stakeholders that only qualitative data can provide to identify key factors driving project success or threatened failure. Case studies, such as those utilized in this research, are uniquely adept at capturing the subjective experience of individuals and at identifying variables, structures, and interactions between stakeholders. Our case studies included 54 semi-structured interviews across 7 different LSS sites, representing a diversity of geographies, project sizes (MW), site types (i.e., greenfield, agrivoltaic, and brownfield / contaminated sites), zoning jurisdiction types, and more. In addition to local residents living in close proximity to these LSS sites, we interviewed other key stakeholders involved in the projects such as developers, decision-makers, utility representatives, landowners, and individuals from community-based organizations. The overarching aim of this case study research was two-fold: (1) to inform subsequent tasks in the CCSD research project (including an upcoming national survey of LSS neighbors), and (2) to provide insights into the following set of research questions: -What are the key positive and negative drivers leading to support and opposition to LSS projects? -To what extent do LSS projects exacerbate or mitigate perceived inequities and marginalization within hosting communities and how can those inequities be mitigated going forward? -What strategies can communities employ to align LSS development with local land-use plans and community needs and values?
In this study, researchers tested hypotheses on the extent to which varying image content representing different types of grassland use affects the visual perception and acceptance of agrivoltaics. In the before-and-after comparison, the acceptance of agrivoltaics increased significantly only for grasslands and special crops. The results suggest that attitudes towards agrivoltaics are rather stable and cannot be easily modulated by additional information.
Solar grazing is on the rise in the United States with dozens of new operations springing up across the country. However, with all of this growth in mind, an important question remains: if a grazier wants to enter the solar grazing market, how much will it cost, and how much revenue can they generate? Budget templates exist that can provide a grazier with guidelines, but hard data on grazier costs and revenues is more difficult to come by.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Bock Agricultural Law & Policy Program set out to answer this question as a project through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s ASTRO InSPIRE Seed Grant Program. Undergraduate students Tyler Swanson and Quin Karhoff, supported by Post-Doctoral Researcher Jessica Guarino and Professor A. Bryan Endres, conducted a survey of American solar grazing practitioners to gather data on common capital and labor investments, as well as operation sizes and revenue streams. The researchers hope that the findings of the survey will help graziers interested in entering the solar grazing market better understand what costs and revenues they can expect and contribute to more accurate budget tools for potential solar graziers. The results of the survey are included in their fact sheet The Economics of Solar Grazing.
The objective of this thesis work is to evaluate the introduction of agrivoltaics in Italy through the study of the effect of the presence of photovoltaic panels on the final yield of potatoes in Ferrara, Italy. The findings of this preliminary study indicate that agrivoltaic systems should be designed while taking into account the need to ensure a minimum level of incident radiation at least in the first two months of cultivation, to avoid an inter-row production drop. Furthermore, photovoltaic panels are not responsible for the absolute low yield in years with unfavorable weather conditions, such as cold years; on the contrary, they may mitigate the damages to the crop by creating an underneath microclimate and the resulting higher temperature, which however is a hypothesis to be verified in more detail in future studies.
In this study, researchers monitored the microclimate, soil moisture, panel temperature, electricity generation and soil properties at a utility-scale solar facility in a continental climate with different site management practices. The vegetated solar areas had significantly higher soil moisture, carbon, and other nutrients compared to bare solar areas. However, the benefits of vegetation cooling effects on electricity generation are rather site-specific and depend on the background climate and soil properties.
This article uses the food–energy–water (FEW) nexus framework to delineate three different perspectives of solar energy development on farmland. The first two perspectives fit into the FEW nexus language of “trade-offs” and “synergies” respectively, arguing that solar energy development either conflicts with agricultural land use and food security or, alternatively, that the two land uses can be co-located appropriately to create agrivoltaic systems. The third perspective is a compromise, arguing that solar energy preserves farmland for future agricultural use.
The aim of this research is to establish how relevant agrivoltaics can be in terms of energy production at regional scale. For this purpose, a methodology is developed to: (i) identify greenhouses using cartographic information systems, (ii) estimate how much of these areas could be covered by solar photovoltaic panels without decreasing the crops production, thus, estimating the optimal photovoltaic cover ratio for different type of crops under different solar conditions by developing a novel set of equations and (iii) evaluate the corresponding photovoltaic power and production.
In this paper, researchers quantify floating photovoltaic impacts on lake water temperature, energy budget and thermal stratification of a lake through measurements of near-surface lateral wind flow, irradiance, air and water temperatures at one of the largest commercial German facilities, situated on a 70 m deep dredging lake in the Upper Rhine Valley, South-West Germany.
This paper looks at the use of photovoltaic thermal air collectors (PV-T) and integrated greenhouse drying systems. It offers insights and data to aid scientists and researchers in the creation and improvement of thermal models for combined solar systems, and presents a detailed analysis of the current state of knowledge in the field of combined solar systems. It also identifies gaps in the existing research and suggests potential avenues for future investigation.
In this article, the authors conducted a qualitative study revolving around three methodological approaches: a press analysis, a review of scientific literature, and fieldwork in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques district in France. Their analysis highlights four main results: (i) agrivoltaism is an innovation conceptualized in techno-scientific arenas which seek to define its agricultural viability; (ii) at the national level, the remote control by the State does not provide a framework for governance capable of involving the various actors in the fields of agriculture and energy; (iii) the deployment of agrivoltaism systems across regions engenders conflict while placing key local actors in a situation of uncertainty with regard to how best to manage this innovation; (iv) while individuals are subjected to territorialization, this paradoxically favors structural policy innovations which outline the contours of territorial governance.
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Harvesting the Sun, the Agrisolar Short Film, is Available Now!March 20, 2024 - 5:52 pm
Case Study: Alaska AgrivoltaicsMarch 20, 2024 - 10:07 am
