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Will photovoltaic greenhouses become commonplace worldwide : a response to the challenges of food and energy security
AUTHOR : Christine PONCET, Université Côte d’Azur, INRAE, CNRS, ISA, Sophia Antipolis, France & Hicham FATNASSI, International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA), Dubaï, United Arab Emirates & Alain JANET, Solar Cloth System, Mandelieu la Napoule, France
Can photovoltaic greenhouses optimise the simultaneous pro-duction of agricultural products and electricity? If so, they would become an efficient tool to best meet the demand for food and energy. This is the question that Christine Poncet, from INRAE, and her team are seeking to answer.
The first photovoltaic greenhouses appeared on the hills of Liguria 20 years ago following a major increase in the cost of electricity in Italy. They are to the credit of transalpine horticulturists who replaced shade screens with solar panels on greenhouses used for growing ornamental species such as asparagus.
A chaotic history penalised by financial operations without agricultural reality
In France, the first PV greenhouse was also built by a pioneering horticulturist in the Alpes-Maritimes, in 2008, at a time when the French government decided to subsidise the buy-back of PV electricity produced on roofs (0.60 €/kWh). These very attractive tariffs led to the arrival of investors, attracted by the economies of scale and low costs offered by the greenhouse structures, without any agricultural ambition. The same drift has been observed in Sardinia where PV greenhouse projects of more than 100 hectares have been achieved through investments by international banks and subsidies from the European Union.
Spain has been more thoughtful. It was the first to experiment with photovoltaic solutions on plastic tomato greenhouses in the Almeria region with flexible amorphous solar panels. Despite very promising agronomic results, these solutions have not been generalised because of the low electrical yields and durability problems of amorphous cells.
Ten years of research and innovation towards mixed electricity and agricultural production systems
The abundance of solar energy makes it an ideal solution to the growing scarcity of fossil fuels. Nevertheless, photovoltaic farm projects regularly raise conflicts over land use, particularly when they are located in agricultural or peri-urban areas. Rather than opposing activities that contribute to issues as crucial as food and energy security, we felt it was important to characterise the constraints and assets of each sector and to look for potential synergies between the two production systems with a logical integration into the very dynamic protected crop sector.
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