In March 2023, France handed a legislation to speed up the manufacturing of renewable power. On this interview, Bertrand Drouot L’Hermine, Deputy Normal Supervisor Enterprise Growth with TSE, discusses the necessary position that agrivoltaics will play not solely in weaning the nation from fossil fuels, but in addition in offering advantages to these farmer in France.
What’s the potential for the event of agrivoltaic initiatives in France?
Bertrand Drouot L’Hermine: We’re on the finish of a primary photo voltaic growth cycle that’s on the bottom in France. Previously 15 years, the federal government has favored large-scale solar energy crops in degraded land. Right this moment these websites have gotten extra distinctive with extra challenges, particularly relating to environmental points. To speed up the event of photo voltaic power, many pursuits should come collectively in the identical mission, whether or not in ecological or agricultural issues. Agrivoltaics is an important factor for the event of photovoltaic in France, so long as it’s effectively conceived, it signifies that the set up of PV is virtuous for the exercise by which it accompanies, greater than a easy fee.
How can agro-solar pairing be useful for land and agricultural actions?
Bertrand Drouot L’Hermine: The mix of a photo voltaic power supply with a cultivated land or a livestock farm gives varied advantages. To begin with, it gives the plant safety towards climatic hazards corresponding to hail or excessive temperatures by making a rotating shadow within the house. It permits the regulation of temperature and the transition between moments of water and the warmth stress of the crops. It additionally reduces evapotranspiration and, in consequence, water consumption. For instance, within the first soybean harvest in our Amance mission, we reported a 75% discount in water stress beneath the system in comparison with the reference plot!
Each developer has a particular set of necessities for the answer they design. TSE has developed a variety of merchandise that meet the particular wants and constraints of the sphere to offer agri-PV options for crops, livestock areas, barren land, and many others. .
Picture: TSE
What are the technological options to contemplate?
Bertrand Drouot L’Hermine: The principle limitations that we put collectively are associated to the orientation of the plots, their typology, their topography, and naturally, the standard necessities of solar energy crops. What makes TSE options particular is that they’re designed primarily based on the wants of the agricultural exercise. The problem for us is to offer the farmer with a service that matches his farming practices, whether or not when it comes to cultivation or mechanization. Our cover permits the passage of virtually all agricultural equipment due to an inter-pole house of 27 meters within the course of cultivation with a low level of 5 meters.
Who’re your totally different companions and the way do you’re employed with them?
Bertrand Drouot L’Hermine: We develop massive volumes of initiatives according to the distinctive challenges going through the nation. We depend on companions who’re each domestically established and able to industrializing in massive volumes, corresponding to Huawei for our inverters.
How can agrivoltaics assist to attain France’s power transition targets?
Bertrand Drouot L’Hermine: The power disaster by which France has been mired previously two years has extra to do with a disaster of capability than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. France wants to enhance its electrical energy manufacturing capability within the subsequent 10 to fifteen years for 3 causes: first, we have to decarbonize the power combine, which remains to be 61% fossil fuels. This can embrace the electrification of utilities and the event of decarbonized power sources corresponding to hydrogen; second, we have to substitute the big nuclear capability that might be phased out between 2030 and 2035 ─ within the hope that these crops will function till then beneath acceptable circumstances when it comes to price and availability; and at last, since we need to re-industrialize the nation, photo voltaic power ─ as the most cost effective, best to deploy, and most accepted supply of power ─ is the perfect reply to enrich our historic nuclear fleet.
In France, the legislation to speed up renewable power manufacturing on March 10, 2023, gives a framework for photovoltaic installations on agricultural land. How does this modification for the business?
Bertrand Drouot L’Hermine: Though not excellent, this legislation has a double worth. That is the primary legislation devoted to renewable power, which reveals the desire to speed up. It additionally gives a transparent and binding framework for what agrivoltaics is and ought to be: the coexistence of two actions, with photo voltaic power manufacturing that gives advantages to agriculture that aren’t solely monetary. Now we now have to attend for the appliance orders to make sure that these necessities are efficient!
What are the milestones you intention to attain within the coming years?
Bertrand Drouot L’Hermine: On the technical stage, our improvements are actually mature and validated. We’re dedicated to growing further pilot initiatives with the perfect technical companions, agricultural chambers, cooperatives corresponding to Dijon Céréales, INRAE (the Nationwide Institute for Agricultural Analysis), the Purpan agronomy faculty, or the Institut de l’Elevage, to reveal the companies supplied by our options. Then again, we’re growing our options extra broadly all through the nation. TSE is the photo voltaic power producer with the strongest territorial granularity. We do initiatives in every single place in France.
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