Tag Archive for: News

AgriSolar News Roundup: New DOE Initiatives, Solar Parks, Supercomputing

DOE Announces Initiatives to Increase Community Solar Deployment

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) made announcements during the National Solar Partnership Summit (NCSP) addressing new initiatives that will unlock barriers related to the deployment of community solar. These initiatives will assist the NCSP in reaching one of their goals of creating $1 billion in energy savings by 2025. Another goal by the NCSP is to “enable community solar to power the equivalent of 5 million households,” according to a recent report by DOE.

Supercomputer to be Used on USDA-Backed Agrivoltaics Project

An agrivoltaic project at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is being funded at $10 million by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over the next four years. Researchers will study agrivoltaic operations in three states: Arizona, Colorado and Illinois. The study aims to address the tension between crop yields and energy production that arises when the two compete for the same land resources. Read more about the project here.

Solar Parks Could Boost Ground-Nesting Bumble Bee Populations

A recent study on solar park management methods in the UK shows that solar parks managed as meadows instead of turf grass are highly beneficial for populations of ground-nesting bumble bees. Solar management scenarios were studied by researchers at Lancaster University and found that solar parks managed as meadows offer the most resources to bumble bees, allowing four times the population capacity as solar parks managed as turf grass. To learn more about the research, click here.

NPR Visits AgriSolar ‘Garden’ in Colorado

NPR recently visited Jack’s Solar Garden, a Colorado farm among about a dozen in the U.S. investing in the colocation of solar energy and farmland.

When Byron Kominek returned home after the Peace Corps and later working as a diplomat in Africa, his family’s 24-acre farm near Boulder, Colo., was struggling to turn a profit.

“Our farm has mainly been hay producing for fifty years,” Kominek said, on a recent chilly morning, the sun illuminating a dusting of snow on the foothills to his West. “This is a big change on one of our three pastures.”

That big change is certainly an eye opener: 3,200 solar panels mounted on posts eight feet high above what used to be an alfalfa field on this patch of rolling farmland at the doorstep of the Rocky Mountains. – NPR

Now, Kominek sells renewable energy back into the local power grid.

As much of the western U.S. has been plagued by a 22-year megadrought, NPR reports that agrisolar is gaining momentum.

“Around the western US, water is the reason to go to war,” says Greg Barron-Gafford, a University of Arizona professor who is considered one of the country’s foremost experts in the field.

“Water is the reason we have to have real big arguments about where we’re going to get our food from in the future,” he says.

Barron-Gafford’s research in the Arizona desert showed some crops grown underneath solar panels needed 50% less water. He and other scientists have their eyes on the infrastructure bill and are pushing to get some of the estimated $300 million included in it for new solar projects to go toward agrivoltaics.

“If you really want to build infrastructure in a way that is not going to compete with food and could actually take advantage of our dwindling resources in terms of water in a really efficient way, this is something to look at,” Barron-Gafford says. – NPR

Greg Barron-Gafford is among more than 30 partners of NCAT’s AgriSolar Clearinghouse.

Listen to the story, here.

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The AP Reports on the Benefits of AgriSolar Development

The Associated Press is reporting on the benefits of agrisolar development, that is, the co-location of solar panels on appropriate farm land.

“There’s lots of spaces where solar could be integrated with really innovative uses of land,” said Brendan O’Neill, a University of Michigan environmental scientist who’s monitoring how planting at a new 1,752-panel facility in Cadillac, Michigan, stores carbon.

Elsewhere, solar installations host sheep that reduce need for mowing. And researchers are experimenting with crop growing beneath solar panels, while examining other potential upsides: preventing soil erosion, and conserving and cleansing water.

The Associated Press

As the AP reports, the U.S. Department of Energy is searching for the best agrisolar ideas in a project it has called InSPIRE.

The U.S. has about 2,500 solar operations on the electric grid, most generating one to five megawatts, according to the Energy Information Administration. A five-megawatt facility needs around 40 acres (16 hectares). While some occupy former industrial sites, larger installations often take space once used for row crops.

Depending on how quickly the nation switches to renewable electricity, up to 10 million acres (4 million hectares) could be needed for solar by 2050 — more than the combined area of Massachusetts and New Jersey, an analysis by Argonne found. Solar developers and researchers hope projects with multiple land uses will ease pushback from rural residents who don’t want farmland taken out of production or consider solar panels a blight.

“We need healthy agricultural communities, but we also need renewable energy,” said Jordan Macknick, the renewable energy lab’s lead analyst for InSPIRE.

The Associated Press

Jordan Macknick and others featured in this article including Greg Barron-Gafford, Rob Davis, and Lexie Hain are partners of the AgriSolar Clearinghouse.

Read the full story, here.