Swiss company Insolight has inaugurated a 250 kW of agrivoltaic installation on apple, peer and apricot orchards in conte, which produced 300 MWh per year for the grid, in collaboration with Agroscope, Romane Energie and the Canton of Valais.
Swiss company Insolight ordered its latest Agrivoltaic Installation on 18 September, built on the site of one of its partners, the Agroscope Federal Center for Agronomy, in Conhe, Switzerland.
“This isn’t our first pilot installation on the site. We started in 2021 with two small solar demonstrators that were used to power our models, before building a 250 kW installation on raspberry and strawberry crops, which was inaugurated in 2023. But this is our first agrivoltaic plant on tree Crops, with three types of fruit trees: Apple, Pear, and Apricot, and Various Technical Implementsations, ”Mathieu Ackerman, co-founder and CTO of Insolight, said PV Magazine France.
The experimental installation of 250 kW comprises an area of 4,000 m² and includes two sub -zones: one with trackers and the other composed of fixed panels in landscape orientation, installed on the rows of trees in a specific orientation. It is equipped with opaque and semi-transparent perc panels, anti-Hail nets and rain-resistant turmaulins, which can be used at different locations.
Instead of producing 300 MWh per year, the modules rest on a special steel structure, 4.50 meters high mounted on driven posts, with rows at a distance of 4 to 5 meters apart.
To study the impact of the production of solar energy on tree plants, a fleet of sensors was installed, measuring temperature, light levels and soil moisture. “Accessible to farmers through our internal ‘insoinsights’ platform, with the collected data we can test all kinds of combinations,” explains Mathieu Ackerman.
Connected to the grid and controlled, the Agrivoltaic factory was funded by the distributor Romane Energie. “As an assistant to project management, Insolight is not intended to invest in installations,” says the founder. With regard to the energy produced, it is fully introduced in the grid for a period of 15 years, sold at a variable government rate, which offers little long -term guarantee in Switzerland. The solar electricity is also sold to Denner, a distributor of the Migros Group, as part of a PPA.
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