Solar ... In the news

QrizB · 7 August at 6:04AM

Meanwhile, the world has built its third terawatt of solar PV.

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/three-terawatts-solar

Swwms we're collectively installing a terawatt every two years at present, with a Bloomberg NEF forecast of nine terawatts total by 2036.

Reed_Richards · 7 August at 8:14AM

Yet plot after plot came in with more fruit, not less, and the plants looked healthier than the ones baking in the open.
Stranger still, the shaded rows did it while drinking far less water. The pattern held across season after season, not just a lucky year. Even seasoned growers came out to see it for themselves.

I'm quoting from a quote here but it won't have been that the fruit plants were drinking far less water, it will be that far less of the water applied to the shaded plants was lost through evaporation. Anyone with a garden is unlikely to find that strange.

EricMears · 7 August at 10:03AM

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82094701#Comment_82094701

Presumably the plants in question don't 'like' full exposure to sunlight which makes them transpire more leaving less 'goodness' in the sap to develop fruit.

QrizB · 10 August at 7:32PM

Agrivoltaics in Italy - fancy a little PV with your EVOO?

https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/production/solar-ban-in-italy-pushes-developers-into-olive-oil-production/141134

Martyn1981 · 11 August at 8:31AM

Great read. But shocking to hear that PV on farmland is prohibited, whilst ~25% of farmland lies fallow, and PV for a 2050 target would only require 2%.

I suspect fears and concerns about PV will be resolved (worldwide), especially as ways to co-locate where necessary, evolve.

“If we want to cover all our needs from renewables within 2050, we need only two percent of all the agricultural land in Italy,” he said. According to Italia Solare, only 0.13 percent, or 16,600 hectares of Italy’s available agricultural land, is covered by utility-scale solar.

Bocchicchio earns €3,000 per hectare per annum from the 44 hectares he rents out to a local solar developer. The farmer said the land is fallow due to a lack of irrigation, combined with an increasingly hot and dry climate.
“No one is obliged to give their land for solar panels, it’s a free choice,” he said. “In marginal areas like this, it’s vital.”
An estimated four million hectares of designated farmland lie fallow in Italy, approximately one-quarter of the total, due to poor soil quality, a lack of irrigation, and labor shortages.
“This government has to look at the reality of the farmers: every year the climate conditions are a little bit worse,” Camillo Rossi, a lawyer who has leased about 100 hectares of his family’s agricultural land to a solar developer, told the Financial Times.
“We don’t have the potential to irrigate. That’s what determined the choice of solar panels,” he added.