There is growing interest in growing food and generating clean energy on the same land to help meet the challenges of global climate change, drought and the increase in the world’s population, which recently exceeded 8 billion. This trend is focused above all on what is called “agrivoltaic”, which consists of using land as an agricultural field and a solar park at the same time, growing vegetables in the shade of solar panels.
However, although growing in the shade of solar panels can provide some advantages such as the fact that plants need less water, the truth is that receiving less sunlight than the plant would receive if it were not under a solar panel can cause problems for quite a few species.
Scientists have investigated the possibility of illuminating these plants with light of the most beneficial color for them, in such a way that this light is enough for them to grow without problems and at the same time there is still a lot of light available to use it in the generation of electricity.
The research has been carried out by a team that includes Majdi Abou Najm, from the University of California at Davis, United States, and Matteo Camporese, from the University of Padua in Italy.
In experiments, it was found that the red part of the visible light spectrum is more effective for plant growth, while the blue part of the spectrum is better used for electricity production.
Tomato plants illuminated with red light from solar panels located above them. If the panels give that light to the plants and use the rest (especially the blue light) to generate electricity, the distribution achieves the best possible use of sunlight. (Photo: Andre Daccache/UC Davis. CC BY-NC-ND)
The experiments included growing tomato plants in research agricultural plots at the University of California at Davis.
The study is titled “Not All Light Spectra Were Created Equal: Can We Harvest Light for Optimum Food-Energy Co-Generation?”. And it has been published in the academic journal Earth’s Future. (Fountain: NCYT by Amazings)
