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.
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