Photovoltaics and agriculture: what if the solution came from the sky ?

Des panneaux à 5 m de hauteur pour ne pas gêner le passage des engins agricoles. EDF RENOUVELABLES

Pour accroître les revenus des agriculteurs la piste d’installer des panneaux photovoltaïques sur les terres agricoles est scrutée de près. Un exemple d'agrivoltaïsme expérimental est étudié de très près à Beaucaire.

Can we combine photovoltaic electricity production and agricultural production ? The question is under study and experiments are increasing. This is the case in Beaucaire in the Gard. Last summer EDF Renewable inaugurated a project nicely called Adeli (decision support for agrivoltaic projects) on rice crops in rotation with alfalfa. The project plans to study this unusual coexistence between agricultural production and renewable energy production.

At Huit Clos in the Beaucaire plain, with a rice farmer and producer of durum wheat, Alain Abecassis, who wanted to try the adventure by making a rice field available. And he believes in the project: which he follows attentively. While EDF Renewables rents the land for the trial, which brings in additional income, the rice farmer and wheat producer estimates: "If the project goes through to the end and comes to fruition, I would like to hand over the land to young farmers so that they can work it". A way to resolve, moreover, the increasingly expensive land problem in the region.

5 meters high

The project will be monitored for 3 years. It is supported by a consortium of four partners (*) with complementary expertise. According to Axel Becker, head of the new technologies department at EDF Renewables "we have been investing for several years in research alongside experts in agronomy and professionals from the agricultural world . We carry out studies on the effects of photovoltaic panels on different crops". An approach that awaits "feedback. This allows us to identify the most suitable crops and technologies, both agronomically and environmentally and economically.

Occitanie, land of experiences

According to Sofiane Boukebbous, development director for the south-east zone at EDF Renewables, to achieve the ambitious objective of 100 GW of solar capacity in France byé rsquo;here à 2050, "we will not be able to simply equip the so-called degraded, anthropized sites; or polluted". We will have to look in the right direction. agricultural land "without replacing one by the other but by combining the activities". Around fifty projects are being carried out in France, including around thirty in Occitanie and Paca: "We adapt to the territory, we avoid the errors of the passed&eac;", said the expert. Projects are being carried out in viticulture to look at how the panels can be used as shade. The rent thus paid, over a long period of 20 to 100%. 40 years old, "cannot replace income from production. It should be seen as a helping hand to equip yourself, diversify, perpetuate an activity". 

In Beaucaire, the photovoltaic panels rest at a height of 5 meters on specific structures so as not to hinder the exploitation of the plot and the passage of agricultural machinery. The foundations of the structures are designed to adapt to unstable soil, characteristic of rice cultivation in flooded areas.

During the inauguration, the prefect of Gard Marie-Françoise Lecaillon cautiously estimated: "I hope that this project will be successful. We must find the compromise, the point of balance between renewable energy production and agricultural production". And as she pointed out: "Whatever the methods of energy production, we will always have to eat". No one can claim otherwise…

(*) EDF Renewables for its know-how, REM TEC for the design of the structures on which the panels rest; CIRAD and INRAE ​​to ensure scientific and agronomic monitoring, in conjunction with the French Rice Center for its expertise in the rice sector. I subscribe to read more