Summary

This project will provide producers in horticulture and viticulture industries across southern Australia with access to cutting-edge information and demonstrations of innovations in PLANT PRODUCTION AGRIVOLTAICS. This technology provides a pathway for producers to move towards carbon-neutral production systems and retain global market access, and at the same time can provide significant co-benefits for increasing climate resilience of crop production. By leveraging the network built by the Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hubs (Hubs), which link researchers, industry and producer networks across the agricultural innovation pipeline, the proposal will help cultivating a thriving Australian agriculture innovation system.

The project builds on and amplifies the pilot currently undertaken by the Victoria Hub, funded in the first round of AgriFutures Innovation Grants (PRO-017276). That pilot demonstrates the potential win-win conditions in a plant production agrivoltaics system and built one demonstration facility in a Victorian vineyard. We now propose to establish a well-connected network of agrivoltaics demonstration facilities across southern Australia (involving the Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and South-West Western Australia Hubs), extending on-farm demonstration work across agro-ecological zones and expanding to further horticultural industries. This project will compile robust information collected under realistic Australian field conditions, which is crucial to adapt these technologies to local requirements and optimise co-benefits. By facilitating knowledge sharing and access to relevant information through the Hubs the proposed project will enable producers to identify increased opportunities and provide confidence to adopt innovations suitable for their production systems.

PLANT PRODUCTION AGRIVOLTAICS

Agrivoltaics is the combination of photovoltaic electricity production and agricultural activities on the same area of land. Agrivoltaics enables electricity creation on farm and provides environmental credential benefits for producers, aspects that are rapidly gaining importance (Colby et al. 2022a, b). The combination of solar energy capture and agricultural production can help social acceptance of the large areas of solar panels required to help reach Australia’s zero-net emissions goal (NetZero Australia, 2022). Current agrivoltaics solutions are mostly in the form of ‘solar grazing’ of sheep among panels of solar farms, or the installation of solar panels on ‘unproductive’ land (Clean Energy Council 2021).

Here, we use the term plant production agrivoltaics for the purposeful integration of photovoltaic into plant production systems to unlock significant co-benefits for crops, such as the creation of an advantageous microclimate, protective shading and protection of crops from extreme weather events, such as the increasingly frequent and severe heatwaves or hailstorm events threatening high value crops such as grapevines. Furthermore, the integrated crops can keep the solar panels cooler, which makes photovoltaic energy capture more efficient.

FROM OVERSEAS
The US and Europe are already conducting significant work in plant production agrivoltaics. Promising results for important crops lay the foundation for further support (e. g. a new US$ 8M programme that started in 2023; US Department of Energy 2022, coming from an already large basis of projects across the US; InSPIRE 2024), and in France and Spain commercial set-ups are already deployed, mostly in viticulture. This indicates the already high technology readiness level (TRL) of plant production agrivoltaics overseas (many at TRL 7 and 8, some at 9 according to the US Department of Energy scale; US Department of Energy 2015).

Program

AgriFood Innovation

Research Organisation

The University of Melbourne

Objective Summary

This project will:

Generate data (a) on the performance of grapevines under solar panels and (b) electricity generation within an established agrivoltaics demonstration site in Victoria (leveraging the AgriFutures-supported pilot project PRO-017276) and within a to-be-established commercial vineyard in South Australia.
Generate data on the performance of selected horticultural crops (winter and/or summer) under solar panels within to-be-established demonstration facilities in Victoria and Western Australia
Explore whether current crop models can adequately extrapolate crop performance under panels
Leverage the demonstration facilities, project activities, and innovation networks of the four participating Hubs for extension and knowledge transfer engagement