When solar projects reach the end of their expected performance period, there are several management options. They include extending the performance period through reuse, refurbishment, or repowering of the facility or fully discontinuing operations and decommissioning the project. In this resource guide, the Center for Rural Affairs briefly expands upon these options as well as potential decommissioning plans, followed by suggestions for county governments once the decision to decommission a project has been made.
Tag Archive for: Solar
In this paper, an integrated methodology is developed to determine optimum areas for Photovoltaic (PV) installations that minimize the relevant visual disturbance and satisfy spatial constraints associated with land use, as well as environmental and techno-economic siting factors. The visual disturbance due to PV installations is quantified by introducing and calculating the “Social Disturbance” (SDIS) indicator, whereas optimum locations are determined for predefined values of two siting preferences (maximum allowable PV locations—grid station distance and minimum allowable total coverage area of PV installations). Thematic maps of appropriate selected exclusion criteria are produced, followed by a cumulative weighted viewshed analysis, where the SDIS indicator is calculated. Optimum solutions are then determined by developing and employing a Genetic Algorithms (GAs) optimization process. The methodology is applied for the municipality of La Palma Del Condado in Spain for 100 different combinations of the two siting preferences. The optimization results are also employed to create a flexible and easy-to-use web-GIS application, facilitating policy-makers to choose the set of solutions that better fulfils their preferences. The GAs algorithm offers the ability to determine distinguishable, but compact, regions of optimum locations in the region, whereas the results indicate the strong dependence of the optimum areas upon the two siting preferences.
Australian Researchers Develop Solar Panels Optimized for Agrisolar
“University of New South Wales researchers have teamed up with Tindo Solar to develop a line of semi-transparent modules, specialized for agrivoltaic cropping, which will use nanoparticles tuned to capture different parts of the light spectrum. ‘There is evidence you don’t need the full spectrum and some plants will work even better if you provide them with only part of the spectrum,’ project lead and UNSW Associate Professor Ziv Hameiri tells PV Magazine Australia. Crucially, he says, the project will also open a line between farmers, solar researchers and industry, creating the potential for mutual benefits.” – PV Magazine
Agrisolar Operations Show That Solar Does Not Compete with Farmland
“In short, Agrivoltaics is a rapidly growing branch of the energy transition. It is being applied to all manner of crops across the world. All kinds of benefits are emerging, with China even using it to reverse desertification. Not only is it expanding clean energy production, it is providing a vital second income stream for farmers. Banning it would cut off a really important opportunity for Britain’s farmers, at a time when rural poverty is a real issue.” – Green Peace
Oregon State Develops 5-Acre Agrisolar Project
“Oregon State University has started construction on a $1.5 million research project to optimize dual-use, co-developed land hosting solar photovoltaic arrays and agriculture. The five-acre Solar Harvest project is located at Oregon State’s North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Oregon, 20 miles south of Portland. The 326-kW project is the result of a partnership between Oregon State and the Oregon Clean Power Cooperative, which developed the solar array and financed the construction of the solar array.” – Solar Power World
Agrivoltaic (APV) systems have emerged as a promising solution to reduce the land-use competition between PV technology and agriculture. Despite its potential, APV is in a learning stage and it is still necessary to devote big efforts to investigate its actual potential and outdoor performance. This work is focused on the analysis of APV systems in agriculture greenhouses at global scale in terms of energy yield. In this study, a novel dual APV model is introduced, projected in four representative locations with a high crop cultivation greenhouse implantation, i.e. El Ejido (Spain), Pachino (Italy), Antalya (Turkey) and Vicente Guerrero (Mexico), and for 15 representative plant cultivars from 5 different important socioeconomic families of crops, i.e. Cucurbitaceae, Fabaceae, Solanacae, Poaceae, Rosaceae. At this stage, semi-transparent c-Si PV technology has been considered due its high efficiency and reliability. The results show that APV systems could have a transparency factor around 68% without significantly affecting the total crop photosynthetic rate. Taking this into account, APV systems would produce an average annual energy around 135 kWh/m2, and values around 200 kWh/m2 under a favorable scenario. This could represent a contribution to the total market share between 2.3% (Mexico) and 6% (Turkey), and up to 100% of the consumption demand of greenhouses equipped with heating and cooling (GSHP), and lighting.
In the context of accelerated climate crisis this article investigates the energetic-political possibilities of solar energy in the Czech Republic. In the absence of solar cooperatives, the article examines residential PV installations and a ground-mounted solar mono-plantation as a terrain for possible commoning. It proposes technoecologies as a framework and tool to not only focus on what solar infrastructure brings together, but also what is left out or disarticulated in specific arrangements but can be seen as infrastructure’s productive “limits” that entail possibilities for differential inclusion, regeneration, and care. Ethnographic technoecological analysis shows how unexpected plant growth within the plantation points to multispecies refuges transforming the electric monoculture, and how electrical rewiring could connect PV arrays to households in multiple occupancy buildings (paneláky) in ways that enable new forms of sharing and joyful squandering of electricity in times of energy abundance.
In this article, a vertical bifacial + reflector configuration is presented as a candidate for solar canals and other applications that allow dual use of the land. Modeling with weather data from Merced, CA shows output to be competitive with fixed 20° tilt systems, with south-facing vertical orientation showing 117% and 87% of annual output of south-facing 20° systems with and without a reflector, respectively. Repetition with weather data from Houston, Denver, and Miami produces similar results, with values ranging from 112%–121% and 82%–94%, which serve as conservative estimates due to lack of modeled soiling on tilted systems in the latter comparison. South-facing vertical orientations have better performance in nonsummer months relative to other systems, resulting in a flatter seasonal curve, with useful implications for load balancing and energy storage. East- and west-facing vertical orientations outperform their fixed tilt defaults, even without a reflector, and tolerate higher dc/ac inverter ratios than similar south-facing vertical orientations before appreciable clipping effects are seen.
This guide provides an overview of the federal investment tax credit for residential solar photovoltaics (PV). The federal residential solar energy credit is a tax credit that can be
claimed on federal income taxes for a percentage of the cost of a solar PV system paid for by the taxpayer.
Jack’s Solar Garden’s 2022 season caught on film by documentarian Chad Weber of Longmont, Colorado. Hear from our people, see the work that has been done, decide how the future of solar development on America’s farmland.
The Power of Shade in Agrivoltaics
“The sun’s energy feeds grazing fodder and crops side-by-side with solar panels. ‘For farmers, it’s a two-income stream,’ said Brad Heins, professor of animal science at the University of Minnesota. That might mean planting crops that thrive in the shade cast by the panels. Or, in Heins’ case, it can mean cooling cows in the panels’ shade rather than resorting to expensive fans in a barn.
Heins and his colleagues are at the cutting edge of this new field (agrivoltaics), but they aren’t alone. There are hundreds of agrivoltaics projects underway in the US. Some work better than others, and some may wind up not working at all. But the best will lead to a greener and more profitable rural America that embraces renewable energy as an asset.” – The Washington Post
Agrivoltaic Site Under Construction in Oregon
“Construction is underway on a $1.5 million project that will allow Oregon State University researchers to further optimize agrivoltaic systems that involve co-developing land for both solar photovoltaic power and agriculture. The five-acre Solar Harvest project is located at Oregon State’s North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Oregon, 20 miles south of Portland. It is the result of a partnership between Oregon State and the Oregon Clean Power Cooperative.
The problem with agrivoltaics research to date, Higgins said, is that it has occurred using solar arrays designed strictly for electricity generation rather than in combination with agricultural uses, such as growing crops or grazing animals. The solar array at the North Willamette Research and Extension Center is designed specifically for agrivoltaics research, with panels that are more spread out and able to rotate to a near vertical position to allow farm equipment to pass through, Higgins said.” – Oregon State University
Agrivoltaics is Shown to be a “Win-Win” for Food and Energy
“’With the right investment, innovation and robust collaboration, agrifood systems could become one of the world’s most hopeful solutions to climate change, as well as reduce poverty and provide nourishment for all,’ says Sean de Cleene, head of the Food Systems Initiative at the World Economic Forum (WEF).
‘The hallmark characteristic of agrivoltaics is the sharing of sunlight between the two energy conversion systems: photovoltaics and photosynthesis,’ says Jordan Macknick, lead energy-water-land analyst at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. ‘It essentially mimics what humans have been doing for hundreds of years with agroforestry – think shade-grown coffee – intentionally creating partial shade to create multiple layers of agricultural productivity on the same piece of land.’” – Energy Monitor
This resource is an overview of the Photovoltaic Storm Water Management Research and Testing (PV-SMaRT) project, which seeks to develop and disseminate research-based, solar-specific resources for estimating storm water runoff at ground-mounted PV facilities as well as storm water management and water quality permitting best practices.
THE LATEST
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
