Comment on Vertical solar panels help farmers produce both energy and crops
over_clox@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Interesting. How well does this integrate with existing harvesting machinery?
Comment on Vertical solar panels help farmers produce both energy and crops
over_clox@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Interesting. How well does this integrate with existing harvesting machinery?
perestroika@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
Machinery comes is varying width. I would guess a farmer needs to decide at some point - is the priority using a 10-meter wide tool, or is it OK to settle with a 6-meter tool, or even a smaller one.
Basing on that, they’ll decide what the clearance between rows of panels should be. From an energy installation viewpoint, the shadow of one row should not cover another row during normal operating conditions. Assuming sun at 30 degrees elevation (“September on latitude 60”), the shadow of a fence that’s 1.2 meters tall will be about 1.75 * 1.2 = 2.1 m long. So from an energy generation viewpoint, one can pack things more densely than makes sense for farming.
Tobberone@lemm.ee 3 months ago
In the article the panels look miniturised. The farmer i visited had his start 60-80cm up. Else they would be shadowed by the crop. So the height of the panels are closer to 2m.
None of that changes anything in regards to neither your math nor your reasoning, which is both enlighting and interesting😃