A farm in Bavaria is covering its hops with solar panels, providing electricity to 250 households and shading the plants from the increasingly scorching summer heat in the process.

Hops for beer flourish under solar panels. They’re not the only crop thriving in the shade.::A farm in Bavaria is covering its hops with solar panels, providing electricity to 250 households and shading the plants from the increasingly scorching summer heat in the process.

  • Lazerbeams2English
    6•11 months ago

    Sounds good to me. My only real complaint about solar panels is the space they occupy. That complaint goes away if that space can also be used for crops. It’s a win/win

    • @MechanicalJester@lemm.eeEnglish
      4•11 months ago

      Best use of space was argued for by…ME. Back in 2002 I argued at length with colleagues that California should build solar panel covers for their aqueducts. This would provide electricity as well as significantly decrease algae growth and evaporation from the aqueducts.

      Then car parks at airports.

      There’s a ton of places they can go.

    • @evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1•11 months ago

      Solar panels are about 70x as efficient in getting energy when compared to corn ethanol. If all corn ethanol land (which is heavily irrigated, fertilized, and subsidized) were converted to solar, it would generate 3x the yearly electricity needs of the US.

      30.2 million acres * 400 MWh/acre/year = 12,080 TWh/year. US energy use is about 4,000 TWh/year.

      We are already taking cropland away for energy production, might as well make it way more efficient.