Iberdrola plans to replicate its ‘WineSolar’ project, which combines voltaic energy with wine exploitation, in several projects in Spain, where 13% of the land cultivated with vineyards in the world is concentrated. Currently, the energy company uses this agrovoltaic system together with Bodegas González Byass and Grupo Emperador in Toledo.
Although the general public still does not know the advantages of this practice that unites the farmer with the production of solar energy, the company has expressed its intention to continue betting on it and will continue to improve the current model after evaluating the results of the experiment. . allocation throughout the next year.
What is it?
The concept of agrivoltaic agriculture did not begin to become popular until the last decade, despite having been first devised in 1981 by German scientists Adolf Goetzberger and Armin Zastrow. The first practices were related to ‘agrisolar’, a scheme that promoted the non-affectation of agricultural land and the viability of this activity of implementing a photovoltaic system on the same land, under which installations were developed on the roofs of these buildings or barns. . .
Later, it evolved to be combined with the management of shared light between a photovoltaic installation and daily agricultural life, giving rise to agrovoltaics, through which, for example, solar panels are deployed to shade crops. Its definition is one of the challenges of this technique in Spain, as recognized by the Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF) in its recent report, where it proposes maintaining “coherence” between both sectors.
The association, in fact, plans to talk about bioagrivoltaics as the effective integration of agricultural and livestock activity, a priority, and the generation of electricity with photovoltaic technology, a secondary objective, under concepts of ecological production and through the shared management of light. . .
If extended, it would join other definitions such as that of Germany, which limits it to combined land use although prioritizing agricultural activity, while Italy establishes that agricultural and/or pastoral activity cannot be affected. For its part, France also evaluates the impact of the photovoltaic installation qualitatively and quantitatively, and that it does not generate a significant negative impact on agricultural activity.
Opportunity for the field
According to UNEF data, the production of electricity from agrivoltaics can represent an increase of more than 30% in the economic value of land; an increase of 60-70% in your total productivity; more opportunities for farmers to achieve long-term profitability, and environmental improvement.
France has been one of the first European countries to promote the development of agrivoltaism through public tenders in 2017. Other countries that have implemented similar initiatives or that include it in their planning are the USA, South Korea, India, Israel, Germany and Italy, as well as China, Japan, Malaysia and Spain, have projects in this field.
Currently, the global agrivoltaic market has reached an installed power of more than 14 gigawatts peak (GWp), but in subtropical and semi-arid areas it is far from being an alternative to promote even though it is there where there seems to be the greatest development potential. . .
Regarding the coexistence of photovoltaic systems with agricultural activity, German studies distinguish between “unsuitable crops”, such as wheat, spelt, fruit trees and sunflowers, and “suitable” crops such as rye, barley, oats, peas or tobacco. Onions, beans, cucumbers and zucchini would be part of the “medium suitable” group, while potatoes, hops, spinach, lettuce and broad beans would be “very suitable crops”, according to this classification, conditioned by the climatic zone.
‘VinoSolar’
Among the projects in Spain is ‘WineSolar’, launched by Iberdrola in the vineyards of the Emperador Group, which has become the first intelligent agrovoltaic plant in the country, capable of adapting the arrangement of the modules to the needs of the vineyards, to regulate the incidence of the sun and the temperature through the shading of the panels.
The generation of this plant, of 40 kilowatts (kW), will be used entirely for self-consumption of the wineries. Despite being “a very small pilot” more degrees, but the excess radiation is counterproductive.”
Iberdrola will monitor the results throughout the next year. If it gives a “very positive” yield, Tejerina advances that it would be taken into account, of course, for future plantations, because uprooting all the planted vines “would not make sense.”
Other projects
The vineyard is also the protagonist of the Valencian project ‘Picassent’, by Inderen, a 1 megawatt (MW) installation that contributed to recovering an area of landfills. In Granada, on the other hand, there is BayWa re’s ‘Aldenhín’, where 10% of a 56 megawatt peak (MWp) photovoltaic system corresponds to agrovoltaics for growing cereals between panels.
Its climate and soil characteristics make Murcia an optimal enclave, as shown by Iasol’s ‘Agrisol’, a research initiative with an estimated 10 kW power where photovoltaics will be compatible with a pepper crop.
Added to this is Endesa’s 85 MW project in Totana, operational since 2019, the result of collaboration with the Murcian Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Development (Imida), and which shares land with red pepper, broccoli, artichoke, thyme . and pitaya.
