As seen through the eyes of Dan Schmidt
With total candor, “I must tell you, oh reader, that Dan is
my son,” Chair of RPG, Connie Schmidt confesses. He is a thinker and has been a ponderer of
deep issues since 5th grade. Last year, Part I of Agrivoltaics was
shared with the RPG Newsletter, and now here is Part II. Admittedly, this is rather “dense” with
complex issues, but looking into incredible solutions is something that is needed
for the climate issues of today to be tackled. Enjoy…
The
first North American Agrivoltaics Conference, Solar Farm Summit 2023, was an
amazing display of what is happening and what is possible around the world.
There
are two broad categories of Agrivoltaics: Solar First and Food First.
There
were also very interesting discussions of the difficulty of interconnecting
large projects to the grid and building new transmission lines needed for all
the new renewables being built. One potential discussed was pairing large
projects with large loads to avoid transmitting the power for long distances
and potentially building microgrids that reduce or eliminate interconnection
requirements. Energy storage and flexible loads paired
with agrivoltaic projects can empower the new manufacturing centers that are being
developed because of the IRA and infrastructure bills
recently passed. Industrial parks can operate as microgrids with flexible
interconnection requirements that can connect to the larger grid at a later
date to function as a grid-balancing tool. Being able to build projects without
waiting for the interconnection equipment and
the incumbent costs to the utility (sometimes multi-year
wait times and millions of dollars), allows
projects to be built at an accelerated rate with competitive costs due to
falling energy storage and smart load controller costs. It’s possible to
utilize used electric car batteries to act as stationary energy storage to
avoid supply chain constraints on new energy storage products. The Sol Ark
Inverter is perfect for allowing these microgrid applications to be
paired with a flexible range of different battery chemistries.
It also allows pairing with a range of other solar
products AC coupled or with generator backup integrated. It’s possible to
use biogas or syngas to run generators and operate these backup generator
systems as carbon negative if paired with other carbon removal systems with the
carbon neutral gasification or anaerobic digester inputs. Microgrids are a
powerful tool to empower a new generation of industrial and agricultural
centers around the world, or even to power off
world colonies with circular economies harnessing the elemental molecular
economy of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen as water, air, soil, food, and fuel.
I met
a couple guys launching a crypto mining DAO (decentralized autonomous
organization) that is developing a solar farm paired with Bitcoin mining. Their
project is called Solar Farm Access. Using batteries, this set up can help
balance the grid as a flexible load and generate incredible wealth. Check out
Energy Web Chain and the Crypto Climate Accords, too. They are both spin-offs
from the Rocky Mountain Institute, which I became a big fan of from their
excellent reporting and studies in DER (distributed energy resources).
Industrial
feedstocks can be sourced from biomass grown using agrivoltaics methods and can employ BECCS
(biomass to energy with carbon capture sequestration). Ethanol plants are
receiving a lot of attention for carbon capture potential, but gasification and
anerobic digesters have more potential as we phase out gasoline through
electrification of transportation. Literally all products made using
petrochemicals can be synthesized using natural sources with enough clean
energy. Ammonia production in particular pairs well with agrivoltaics,
considering it is the most consumed fertilizer chemical in the world. Syngas,
biogas, methanol, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen can all pair with large
wind/solar installations and, using electrochemical processes, produce carbon
negative products by using biomass as a source of carbon for the chemical
engineering process. The carbon capture topic is vast and complex, so I'll have
to write up my research and plans for that sometime later.
SolarEdge
was a main sponsor of the event and featured SolarGik, a racking manufacturer that
SolarEdge acquired several years ago and which has developed
agrivoltaic projects in Israel. Their approach is similar to ATI and NexTracker,
the current industry leaders, but they have made some improvements to their
design that benefit both agrivoltaics and conventional large-scale utility
solar. Their system is lighter and able to be mounted higher with less steel
than the others. Also, rather than very long rows that do not conform to the
contour of the land, they focus on shorter tables that are better able to
follow uneven slopes. They demonstrated the ability to install utility scale
projects on topographies that other systems wouldn't be able to. They have also
installed their trackers integrated into greenhouse structures and the roofs of
commercial/agricultural buildings.
SolarEdge
also presented a software solution they called SOMA to integrate a wide range
of sensors and real-time grid monitoring for smart responsive management of
energy assets. The tracking algorithm can optimize an agrivoltaic system for
food production by tilting the panels away from the sun during clipping events,
when there is more DC being produced than the inverter can convert to AC. This increases the life
of the solar panel by reducing heat stress and can be programmed to accommodate
the needs of different crops. There is also huge
potential for this type of software to predict the needs of the grid and
utilize energy storage and flexible loads. This would stabilize the grid with a
much higher ratio of intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar, with
less reliance on batteries. These improvements would make our grids more
efficient. SolarEdge is also working on a
combiner box level optimizer for whole string MPPT optimization rather than a
1:1 or 2:1 optimizer.
I
really liked a rainwater collection system integrated into an Agrivoltaic
racking designed by another Israeli company, Trigo. Check them out on YouTube.
The
conference discussed water scarcity a lot and how agrivoltaics can literally
transform arid/ semi-arid environments into lush productive grasslands or
farmlands. We can reverse desertification through implementing ecological
systems within solar arrays and improve food and energy security around the
world as climate change continues to impact our environment.
I
imagine farms in the future will be stewards of ecology while producing food
and energy, and harnessing the infinitely recyclable elements of the air and
soil to make all the same products we currently consume in our society.
Something
many people don't realize is that even if we were 100% clean energy immediately
today, global warming would continue for the rest of our lives and the ice caps
would potentially still totally melt with over 200 feet of sea level rise
displacing over 1 billion people from their homes. The only way to reverse
global warming at this point is to actively remove greenhouse gasses from the
atmosphere. It's technically possible but requires a total shift in every
aspect of human industry for which most solutions already exist. This all
requires vast amounts of energy. The Earth receives millions of times the
energy it consumes in a year every day from the sun so don't worry, it's very
doable.
There
was so much to see at the solar farm summit that I can't share it all here, so
shoot me a message or grab me on lunch sometime if you want to hear more.
Dan
Schmidt,
daniel.schmidt1089@gmail.com
P.S.:
If you are interested in Carbon Capture, check out Airminers Boot Up. It's a
free online course with discussion groups and abundant resources about the
current state of the carbon capture industry. I took the course over a year ago
and will be going through it again soon, so ask me about that, too, if you're
interested.
Editor's note: If you are interested in this summer's Solar Farm Summit in Chicago, go to Solarfarmsummit.com.
