Japan-based Sekisui Chemical, a developer of a roll-to-roll process for the production of perovskite PV panels, has announced an agrivoltaic project in collaboration with Terra, an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor and part of Japan-based Citizen Energie Chiba.
Sekisui announced that the project’s perovskite modules will be based on the 30 cm wide films made in a roll-to-roll production process and the sealing, film formation, materials and process technology. The Sekisui perovskite solar energy installations are said to have an outdoor durability of 10 years and an energy conversion efficiency of 15%. The company said it is currently working to improve the sustainability and efficiency of power generation, and scale up to 1-meter track widths.
The modules have a convex lens-shaped cross-section and are based on a design by Terra, which holds the rights to relevant patents from Citizen Energy Chiba. The new modules are part of a lighter system intended to balance wind loads and center of gravity without adding the extra weight that would be required with conventional modules, the manufacturer said.
Both the module design and Terra’s “ultra-slim” mounting and anchoring method will be validated throughout the life of the project. Both performance data and crop data will be collected, verified and compared to predicted values.
Agrivoltaics, also called ‘solar sharing’ in Japan, is a specialty of Terra, according to the project team. The plans include testing agrivoltaic systems with a variety of crops in Japan, including rice fields, as well as field tests on fallow and abandoned agricultural lands.
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