{"id":11317,"date":"2019-08-28T13:07:37","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T20:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/?p=11317"},"modified":"2019-08-28T13:13:47","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T20:13:47","slug":"installing-solar-panels-on-agricultural-lands-maximizes-their-efficiency-new-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/2019\/08\/28\/installing-solar-panels-on-agricultural-lands-maximizes-their-efficiency-new-study-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"Installing Solar Panels on Agricultural Lands Maximizes their Efficiency, New Study Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A recent study<\/a> by Oregon State University has found that solar panels located on agricultural fields are the most productive. This idea of co-developing the same area of land is called agrivoltaics<\/strong> and this study has determined that if less than 1% of agricultural land was co-developed with solar panels, the resulting energy would be enough to fulfill the global electric energy demand.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
35th Street Solar Array.
Photo by Brandon Trelstad, Oregon State University Sustainability Office<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Chad Higgins<\/a>, an associate professor in the College of Agriculture<\/a>, believes that farmers 8,000 years ago had already found the best place to harvest the sun\u2019s energy<\/strong>, \u201cOur results indicate that there\u2019s a huge potential for solar and agriculture to work together to provide reliable energy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, the favored location for solar arrays is out in the desert so what does this mean for future installations?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Solar panels in general are known for being pretty finicky and their overall efficiency actually drops the hotter they get. According to Higgins, desert solar panels \u201chave less productivity per acre\u201d<\/strong> than those in slightly cooler locations which supports this shift towards agricultural lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this study, OSU researchers analyzed data collected from five large grid-tied, ground-mounted solar arrays that Tesla<\/a> has installed on Oregon State-owned agricultural lands. Some power production data was collected as often as every 15 minutes<\/strong> at the 35th Street Solar Array<\/a> which is located on the west side of the Corvallis campus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Sheep graze under the 35th<\/sup> Street Solar Array at Oregon State University.
Photo by Mark Floyd, Oregon State University. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Data from Tesla was matched up with data collected by microclimate research stations located at the various arrays to find any patterns linking to air temperature, humidity, wind speed, etc. Using this data, Elnaz Hassanpour Adeh, a recent OSU Ph.D graduate, created a model that graphed the solar array efficiency as a function of air temperature, wind speed, and relative humidity.<\/strong> His results found that efficiency improves with cooler temperatures, a slight breeze, and less humid conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSolar panels are just like people and the weather, they are happier when it\u2019s cool and breezy and dry\u201d<\/p>Chad Higgins, OSU College of Agricultural Sciences Associate Professor<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

 Pairing these conditions with the 17 classes of globally accepted land cover found that the worst location would be in snow\/ice and the best would be on agricultural lands.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Meteorological instruments in and adjacent to the 35th<\/sup> Street Solar Array at Oregon State University to measure temperature, relative humidity, wind speed wind direction and incoming solar energy.
Photo by Elnaz Hassanpour, Oregon State University. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A previous study<\/a> published by Higgins and Adeh had already found that solar panels increase the production of non irrigated farmland and the most recent study upholds those findings and affirms that solar panels on agricultural lands increases the productivity of the farmland and the solar array.<\/strong> Another win-win for the books!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To learn more, check out the OSU Newsroom\u2019s article<\/a> and the original study<\/a>!<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent study by Oregon State University has found that solar panels located on agricultural fields are the most productive. This idea of co-developing the same area of land is called agrivoltaics and this study has determined that if less than 1% of agricultural land was co-developed with solar panels, the resulting energy would be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8067,"featured_media":11323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1292116,1292117,1292103,1292105,1290630],"tags":[1811,356,179,101484,627782,1206],"class_list":["post-11317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-sustainability","category-community-sustainability","category-energy","category-research","category-sustainable-development","tag-agriculture","tag-energy","tag-research","tag-solar","tag-solar-panels","tag-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8067"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11317"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11349,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11317\/revisions\/11349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/ecologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}