Farm all the things!
Also see:
Surprising to me, because plants use sunlight to grow, but when i think about it it makes sense because many plants don't prefer full direct light for 8 hours a day.
And the science has proved it true
Tried getting a grant funded to study this earlier this year. Didn't get funded, but agrovoltaics seems extremely promising, especially in places where you are otherwise quite literally paying for shade.
I really want to try doing agrovoltaics in combination with Vanilla. My best growing Vanilla right now is in >80% shade. Its about 40k to convert a quarter acre jungle into a production shade house for Vanilla, which includes site leveling and graveling, along with posts and all the bells and whistles. We usually run 50% shade cloth at 10ft, but I think if the solar panels were mounted at 12ft, this would give us plenty of overhead space to both run the solar, and then also mount the shade cloth, irrigation, monitoring systems, which when compared with what the solar is practically negligible.
It all makes sense on paper until I get to the question of "Ok. So what do I now do with a quarter acre of solar production?" In spite of the fact that we have some of the highest energy costs in the world, the system for selling back into the grid here is.. lets just say not favorable to anyone not grandfathered into the system. Its basically not worth it, not to mention that the infrastructure simply isn't present in most places where it would be profitable to install this kind of system. So the ideal would be to do something value added with the juice. Some ideas we've had is a fruit/ juice processing facility. Large reefers and freezers basically act as batteries "storing" the cold via the refrigeration cycle. But not you have significantly higher costs to recoup, and the "solar + vanilla" component becomes a side project, which is not ideal. A freezer container, even used, runs 40-100k+. Other random ideas we had were fertilizer production (literally direct atmospheric nitrogen production), a "micro" data center, and even crypto mining. A system of this size could even be used to support a small community (maybe 5-10 residences), so maybe it could be developed as part of a mini-HOA?
So the challenge we've identified isn't necessarily the system, but what do you as a farmer do with the extra energy you are producing when the grid doesn't want to pay you for it?
A system of this size could even be used to support a small community (maybe 5-10 residences)
I'd try to explore exactly that as a coop with locals to lower their energy bills. Some communities in Spain are doing exactly that, but on roofs that have the appropriate structure to receive solar panels
See !https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/57600131
If you are in the EU, you could also try to apply to the same type of grant they've received from IDAE (Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy)
But now you're responsible for running high-voltage infrastructure and navigating god knows what government permitting. If a storm wrecks your infra, now you have 5-10 families on your case to fix it.
Sounds like OP's ideas for using the excess power locally are the best options. What a problem to have!
Running power lines locally is likely a pain, but not an insurmountable one when the "local" is your next door neighbors. id expect its both harder and easier rural. Bigger distances and almost no infastructure, but there tend to be less permits, and more people who do manual labor and have heavy duty equipment on hand to trench if needed.
If you really work on it interconnecting neighbors, you could have the first group connect to their neighbors after adding their own panels, on and on. If youre trenching power, I would slap in some fiber in its own conduit as well. Get an ISP going while youre at it.
You can share energy through the grid. You already do if you have a grid following inverter, and that's the way to do it. Local production and distribution, but no single point of failure and everybody contributes to thr maintenance of the grid. Perhaps giant improvements in solar panels and storage will make microgrids feasible everywhere, but until then the grid is the best thing we have to provide both reliability and allow for local distribution.
The energy-sharing community-laws starting around Europe are not about running cables between neighbors, but allowing the accounting and billing of energy recognizing the already existing local distribution that the grid allows.
This adds up with my own experience. The last 2/3 summers (climate change?) unusual heat and lack of rain has had a negative effect on my land. I've been looking at planting more trees in order to create more shade, so the plants don't get so zapped but this would work too if you'd benefit more from extra electricity.
After seeing a guy comparing vertical to horizontal placing and given farms generally need fences and even sometimes electric fences. I feel like using panels in most new fencing would be a no brainer.