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Growing tomatoes and peppers among the solar panels?

What do solar panels and tomatoes have in common? Living space. That’s the idea behind a new collaboration between SunPower, a solar power company, and the University of California at Davis.

This experiment in co-living is meant to figure out which crops can grow effectively in the space between rows of solar panels. Tomatoes and peppers are currently being tested.

The SunPower R&D Ranch -- where the company plans to test a suite of new technologies -- is currently attempting to grow tomatoes and peppers in between the Oasis arrays, but it will attempt to grow other types of crops too. Heiner Lieth, professor at the UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Science, started a solar research project in 2010 and has successfully been able to grow crops in the shade of solar panels. But there’s a lot more work to be done in order to scale these solutions, he said.

“I’m convinced it’s possible,” said Lieth. “The question is what the ideal balances are depending on what you’re going to be using for your cropping systems and what the market is for your electricity and agricultural products. And it opens up a whole world of questions.”

Tomatoes probably aren’t the ideal crop to try to grow right off the bat, he said. Conventional rectangular solar panels probably aren’t the best solution, either. If solar is to become the dominant power source in the U.S. and abroad, it will have to learn how to coexist with agriculture and animals out of pure necessity, Lieth said. And in order to coexist, solar projects will likely need to be designed differently.

Source: Grist / Greentech Media
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