Using light to grow food and harvest energy at the same time 

Scientists have discovered that harnessing different parts of the light spectrum can optimise power generation and agriculture

Spotted: People have been trying to find ways to properly feed our ever-growing population in the difficult conditions that climate change is providing us. One solution that innovators have come up with is agrivoltaics, where crops are grown under the shade of solar panels. But, as scientists from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) hope to prove, this sun harvesting method can be bettered by using its optimal light spectrum.

Under controlled lab conditions, the study created a model to reproduce the response that various plants would have under different light spectra, while conducting a sensitivity analysis to examine solar energy. It found that the red part of the light spectrum is better for growing plants, whereas the blue part is more efficient for solar generation. This finding opens the door for new systems that take blue light for clean energy and pass the red light onto crops.

Corresponding author Majdi Abou Najm, an associate professor at the Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources and a fellow at the UC Davis Institute of the Environment said: “We cannot feed 2 billion more people in 30 years by being just a little more water-efficient and continuing as we do. We need something transformative, not incremental. If we treat the sun as a resource, we can work with shade and generate electricity while producing crops underneath. Kilowatt-hours become a secondary crop you can harvest.”

Even though this discovery is currently no more than a lab-controlled study, its results could help steer global interest in agrivoltaics and pinpoint possible applications for those systems.

Innovations that optimise light energy use are creating an impact across the world. Springwise has previously spotted several of these, including a window coating that blocks infrared light, and a device that can harvest light and relay it to underground spaces.

Written By: Georgia King