HyPErFarm: towards a carbon-free future in farming

ProjectSolar Energy

HyPErFarm has one main goal: to sharply reduce the use of fossil fuel in farming. To achieve this goal of decarbonisation, the project actively looks for business cases farmers might adopt that help them reduce their use of fossil fuels and find economic gain. The key to this question is energy production. Through the use of agrivoltaics, the agricultural sector not only has the potential to greatly defossilise, but also to produce energy that can be used on-farm.

Photovoltaic (PV) has become dramatically more competitive relative to other renewable energy sources and is now as competitive as wind power. Currently, PV parks are installed on large land areas, leading to the loss of land for cultivating crops. Agrivoltaic systems provide an answer to this problem. It represents the dual use of farmland for crop-growing activities and renewable energy production via photovoltaic (PV) cells in solar panels.

In an agrivoltaics setup, the farmland of the future might indeed change significantly. Hence, the project not only has an eye for technical optimisation of agrivoltaics installations but also for the public acceptance of the technology and the ways farmers and citizens might benefit from producing on-farm energy. It looks into:

  • The current public stance on agrivoltaics installations throughout Europe
  • Legal barriers that might still exist for farmers to adopt it
  • Potential ways to fuel on-farm activities (such as animal house feeding, heating and cooling) with locally produced solar power
  • Production of on-farm biochar fertilizer through the process of e-driven pyrolysis

Agrivoltaics webtool

Thinking about agrivoltaics but unsure where to start? Assessing the benefits and risks can be challenging. To simplify decision-making, the HyPErFarm project offers a free, easy-to-use webtool designed to help farmers and stakeholders evaluate the feasibility of agrivoltaics installations.

The tool provides tailored insights by allowing users to input basic details about their site, crops, and shade needs. The webtool generates a comprehensive PDF report as output, detailing parameters such as light distribution, electricity production, expected crop yield, and more.

Use this tool to get a valuable, first-level assessment of agrivoltaic potential on your land, helping you make informed choices for sustainable energy and agriculture integration.