Japan would like to increase the amount of electricity it gets from renewable sources. According to the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies in Tokyo, it is planning for up to 38% of its electrical energy to come from renewable sources by 2030, but solar power accounted for only 8.9% of the country’s energy mix as of 2020. That needs to double if it is to reach its energy goals.
Japan has many mountainous areas that are unsuitable for solar panels. One potential solution is referred to as solar sharing — using land for both farming and solar power at the same time. One of the leading proponents of solar sharing is Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE. The idea is simplicity itself. Mount solar panels high enough above the ground to permit plants to grow and farming equipment to operate underneath them.
According to Yahoo Finance, Takeshi Magami has a one hectare (2.5 acre) farm east of Tokyo. Like many of his colleagues, he grows potatoes, ginger, and eggplants. Unlike many of those same colleagues, most of his arable land is covered by solar panels — 2,826 of them. They supply nearly all the power needed to run the farm, where all the machinery except the tractor and a hand tiller are electric.
The surplus solar power from the panels is fed back to the utility grid and earns him 24 million yen ($187,000) of additional revenue a year. That’s eight times more than the 3 million yen ($23,500) he earns from the crops he grows. Although Japan has recently reduced the financial benefits available for selling power to the utility grid, Magami still makes more from his solar panels than from growing crops.
“Our goal is to electrify and automate all steps of farming” and create a model for what sustainable agriculture could look like, says Magami, who runs his farm as part of his start-up company, Chiba Ecological Energy Inc.
Solar Sharing
The solar sharing movement is gaining adherents as the global push to replace fossil fuels encourages more innovative approaches to generating more renewable energy and reduce their exposure to foreign energy suppliers. Solar sharing is also useful in countries with harsh growing environments, protecting crops by absorbing sunlight and acting as a shield. Panels mounted higher off the ground also stay cooler, which increases their efficiency.
“We’ve seen many regions with climate change, and agrivoltaics could mitigate and make agriculture more resilient,” said Max Trommsdorff, head of the agrivoltaics group at the Fraunhofer ISE in Germany. “Small countries in the sun belt with high population are where agrivoltaics are most urgent and promising.”
Japan, which is targeting to go carbon neutral by 2050, has limited capabilities for solar power because of its mountainous terrain. To compensate, the government is looking toward rooftops, railway lines, highways, and airports, as well as its limited agricultural land.
While Magami has demonstrated the success of solar sharing, the practice hasn’t been widely …….
Source: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/05/23/solar-power-farming-in-japan/