Agri-PV leads the way towards the sustainable use of solar panels

Our journey starts at the farm of Georg Bockmaier. Usually he grows potatoes and cereals, just as his father and grandfather did. Grasbrunn, Bockmaier’s village in the outskirts of Munich, witnesses unusual activities: heavy machinery is brought in, a construction crew from Slovakia is building an agricultural photovoltaic (agri-PV) installation including a sophisticated solar tracking system on the field behind the Bockmaier farm.

We’re in Bavaria, a region in southern Germany that’s regarded as a real hot-spot for start-ups, in particular when it comes to innovative smart farming solutions. Feld.energy is one of them. The ambitious start-up was founded two years ago and is growing rapidly. More than 800 farmers decided to go for it: together with feld.energy, they are installing agri-PV systems on some 900 hectares.

Does this mean, that the Bavarian landscape will get covered with PV-panels and that farming will no longer be possible? Not at all, says Bockmaier: “That’s something new, I can go on with farming. If I take my combine harvester with a cutting width of 6.60 or even 7.50 metres, I get through the rows of panels without any problem. We can also position the PV-panels vertically.”

Nikolai Voitiouk-Blum is feld.energy’s vice president in charge of operations. “Our vision for the next four years is clear,” the manager tells me. “We want to expand into other European countries, such as Italy, so that we can bring one gigawatt of PV-capacity online, the equivalent of an entire nuclear power plant.”