Solar cells in the agricultural landscape

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Achieving the EU’s climate transition targets requires the expansion of renewable energy sources, where the development of renewable energy technologies needs to be combined with energy and land use efficiency, through smart energy systems. In Denmark and Sweden, planning of large photovoltaic installations is associated with challenges, both economically and from a location point of view. Both countries need to strengthen their access to energy and energy storage capacity through more local and smart energy systems. Solar panels are increasingly installed on arable land, which quickly produces high power and profitability, but also leads to conflicts of interest. Countries share a need for more solutions that optimise the conditions for transition to more renewable energy and that contribute to increased food production, one way is to combine agriculture and solar energy. The concept is called agrivoltaic systems, but in this preproject use the term Solbruk. In order to increase opportunities for renewable energy in the agricultural landscape, the partnership in a main project wants to develop sustainable smart energy systems. This is done by creating a Living lab in cross-border regional collaboration where the conditions for solar use at farm level with energy storage are investigated. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the complexity of a collaborative system and how the individual components affect the prerequisites for the whole. Therefore, a pre-project is required to analyse and investigate which solar modules, crops, agricultural machinery and energy storage will be used in the main project’s Living lab. The project is primarily aimed at photovoltaic contractors and actors active in the development of cultivation systems, agricultural machinery and energy storage. In the pre-project, a description of the current situation is formulated to identify the state of knowledge, what is available and make visible the need for development based on smart energy systems for solar use at farm level.

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