this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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Not all agriculture is done in full sun. Ginseng, coffee and other important crops do best in shade. And you can put the panels up on grazing land. The critters often appreciate the shade which approximates a savanna environment.
And things like vertical bifacial solar panels can work especially amazingly on grazing land that isn't suitable for crops.
Counter-intuitive as they may look, they actually have a number of benefits:
The vast majority of the benefit comes from the fact that they are bifacial not vertical.
In fact depending on the weather a standard mount but with bifacial panels will outperform the vertical.
This guy here does a very thorough comparison.
Solar fencing produces 3% more yield and 30% more revenue than rooftop.
https://www.gridcog.com/blog/solar-fence-vs-ground-mount-solar
As I understand it, the biggest struggle with such panels is that it prevents heavy machinery from working the crop