Photovoltaic and agriculture can live together and generate value

In this time of extreme climate change and related political-economic upheavals, the demand for stable and affordable locally produced energy is becoming an increasingly pressing need. 

Renewable energy represents an important and crucial share in ensuring an energy transition from carbon-intensive sources to renewable and clean sources, and within these new sources solar PV represents an important share of the transition. 

Within the photovoltaic world in turn, two types of installations can be distinguished: those with extensive production with panels spread over the entire surface of the land without leaving room for agricultural activities, and those that can instead contemplate the coexistence of energy production activities and agricultural production. 

In the latter case, several solutions are being studied that can benefit agriculture in a way that avoids the land consumption that photovoltaic installations can bring because of the barrier to the sun that they naturally constitute. 

The italian case

The guidelines issued recently by the Italian government contemplate the possibility of implementing projects that aim to put together electrical production and agricultural production by going to improve the conditions of land management without negatively altering its characteristics, so as to create an advantage thanks to the presence precisely of photovoltaic installations. 

These types of plants are called agrivoltaic or agrifotovoltaic and will play a key role in the ecological transition of the European Union. 

These plants, in addition to ensuring the production of renewable electricity and the continuity of agricultural production, will also have to have an innovative component that can at the same time improve the conditions of the bottom and the surrounding area also through the improvement of biodiversity, a fundamental element to restore a natural balance of the territories now strongly compromised due to industrial development and strong anthropization in recent decades. 

To this complex question of integration between different and partly contradictory systems (in fact, the shading of PV panels does not favor the irradiation of the soil with negative consequences for the growth of many plant species), an effective answer can be given through the use of bee-photovoltaic fields, that is, plants that contemplate production from PV panels with the production of bee products.

What is an apivoltaic and why it can help to solve many issues to beekeepers

A bee-photovoltaic plant basically consists of putting together the production coming from the tireless work of bees with photovoltaic production thus going to meet the requirements of the Italian government to create synergy between electrical and agricultural systems with an improvement in the conditions of the surrounding area. In particular, however, it is believed that this type of system not only goes to positively affect the land affected by the intervention because of the greater economic income generated by the production of energy and in part reinvested in the agricultural part, but goes to activate a virtuous circle of greater productivity of the agronomic part due to the presence of the photovoltaic system itself. 

For example, one of the absolutely improvable aspects that can be realized due to the presence of a PV system within the land will be the possibility of installing a low water consumption sprinkler irrigation system on the same supports as the PV system. In addition, the surface of the PV panels can be utilized to collect rainwater that can then be piped into an artificial lake for storing the water itself. Washing water from the panels themselves will also be collected in this way and used in addition to rainwater and water from any wells for irrigation of planted crops. 

Another advantage determined by the presence of this type of planting for beekeeping is determined by the presence of windbreak plants to be planted in the perimeter of the plant itself to mitigate the visual planting of the panels: these plants may be of the species "eucalyptus" a plant extremely productive for bees and very useful in the hottest season (late June/July) to supplement the bees' own nutrition.

Only true productive plants will be useful to the energy transition

All of the above leads us to argue that agrophotovoltaic systems, in order to be considered as such, must be useful solutions especially for agriculture in order to help this sector in continuous crisis to face the enormous challenges related to the climate crisis and the phenomena of soil erosion related to their overuse in recent decades. To do this, we believe that the mere reinvestment of part of the income from agricultural activity is not a sufficient solution to determine a positive value of these plants, but instead it is necessary to activate processes of virtuous cooperation between the two systems that can benefit especially the agronomic side.

 Hence, bee-photovoltaic plants are born to provide a sensible response to this systemic need for synergy between two worlds that to date are still separate (the production of energy and that of food raw materials) in order to sustainably enhance the quality productions of our territories.