Innovative Project Is Growing Crops Beneath Solar Panels in Kenya
The project, officially called “Harvesting the sun twice,” is designed to assess whether or not agrivoltaic systems could be successfully used in rural East Africa.
By combining the land dedicated to solar panels with the land dedicated to agriculture, it is possible to avoid some of these pitfalls. Growing plants beneath elevated solar panels protects them from the sun in hot, dry places and helps the soil retain moisture, the University of Sheffield explained. The strategy has worked successfully in Global North countries like France, Germany and the U.S., but has not been tested in the Global South, according to SEI and The Guardian.So far, the results have been promising, The Guardian reported.
In Kajiado, cabbages cultivated under 180, 345-watt solar panels were a third larger and healthier than the control group. Eggplants, lettuce and corn also fared better in the panels’ shade.
“Turlock Irrigation District, in California’s San Joaquin Valley, will build the first solar canal prototype in partnership with project developer Solar Aquagrid, researchers and others and supported by the state Department of Water Resources.
The prototypes in this mile-long demonstration project, along with future pilots, will help operators, developers and regulators refine designs, assess co-benefits and evaluate how these systems perform. With more data, we can map out strategies for extending solar canals statewide, and potentially across the West.”
In an effort to combat the building industry’s contribution to global emissions, architecture studio, Snøhetta, has completed the sustainable powerhouse Brattørkaia office in Trondheim, Norway. Snøhetta claims that the building produces more than double the amount of electricity it consumes daily.
The purpose of this energy-positive architecture is to make it capable of generating renewable energy through a local microgrid, which can then be supplied to itself, neighbouring buildings, electric buses, cars and boats.
Solar panels that stretch across almost 3,000m2are cladded on the roof and the upper part of the façade. These are placed to harvest the most amount of solar energy possible, with maximum exposure to the sun. The building also includes aluminium cladding.
The company hopes that its efforts will set precedent for future standards within the building industry, showcasing that the architecture has not been compromised for its green agenda.
‘Energy-positive buildings are the buildings of the future. The mantra of the design industry should not be ‘form follows function’ but ‘form follows environment’. This means that the design thinking of today should focus on environmental considerations and reducing our footprint first, and have the design follow this premise,’ said Snøhetta Founder, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen.
In effect, the building dually functions as a small power plant in the middle of the city. Ample space for energy storage is built into the building footprint, allowing it to store surplus energy in the summer months of near total daylight, to then use it in the winter months when daylight is at a minimum.
The building is made to be energy efficient by using technologies that can reduce energy use in its day to day operations. These include insulating the building for maximum efficiency, installing intelligent solutions for air flow to reduce the need for heating, heat recovery solutions for ventilating air, using seawater for heating and cooling and implementing only energy efficient electrical appliances. Daylight conditions are optimised throughout the building design and artificial light use is kept at a minimum.
