Season 5 Episode 7 - Double Harvesting With Agrivoltaics

Étienne Drahi, Head of Solar R&D, TotalEnergies: This region has inspired artists such as Van Gogh, Monet and Cézanne. It's also famous for its agricultural activity. But Europe, like other places in the world, is facing climate change and raising temperatures, which is putting a lot of pressure on farming. Agrivoltaics is one way to help agriculture adapt while also supporting the energy transition in landscapes like Provence.

[The Road to Carbon Neutral: Harvesting twice]

[Farm Domaine de la Cabanasse, Provence, France]

Étienne Drahi: There are growing concerns about the availability of agricultural land. We need to find ways to optimize the use of the land.

[Experimental site, Saint Martin de Crau]

Étienne Drahi: Agrivoltaics involves putting solar modules on top of lands used for farming or livestocks, making it possible to generate energy while also supporting food production.

Marion Alaux, Agronomist, Ombrea: Ombrea is pioneering agrivoltaic solutions. The AgriPV contributes to combining food and energy sovereignty on the same plot. In addition, there are more and more climate changes and extreme conditions. So the panels will protect this crop which is very sensitive to hail, rainy episodes, drought.

[Panels move according to natural phenomena]

Etienne Drahi: Extreme weather events cost the agricultural sector in Europe, billions and billions of euros every year. With agrivoltaics this risk can be mitigated.

Marion Alaux: We have installed sensors in the AgriPV park, which allow us to see in real time the moisture of the soil in the air as well as the effect of wind and light.

[Ombrea Data Lab, Provence]

Marion Alaux : It’s in Ombreas’ premises that we view in real time all the sensors that are here on site and that allow us to adapt the control of the panels.

Patrice Vulpian, Local Farmer, Provence: For the past five or six years, we have started to have episodes of heat waves. And also episodes of violent thunderstorms with hail. So we are obliged to protect ourselves, to try counter these climatic hazards, which have become more and more numerous.

Etienne Drahi: We are not only putting modules on top of crops. They are being design tested and operated to work alongside and even support the growth of crops. TotalEnergies aim to produce 100 terawatt hours of electricity by 2030. And a significant portion of that will come from solar energy.

[PERL Research Centre, Lacq, France]

Pierre Sauquet, Researcher at PERL, TotalEnergies : We are continuously striving to innovate between energy production and maintaining the agricultural productivity. This is one of the focuses at PERL research center. Soil is precious. It can take up to 1,000 years to form one centimeter of soil. We can characterize the soil and the plants from the microscopic scale, looking at the microbes, studying microbe diversity, microbial activity to the very large-scale using satellite data and we can monitor vegetation. For large scale experiments, we developed the InnoAgri experimental platform, where we test different technologies, where we can try different panel densities or different panel tracking algorithms and study impact on crop growth.

Etienne Drahi : I believe this is just the beginning. It might be at small scale but what we do here in France could have a real impact and serve as a blueprint, expanding agrivoltaics across Europe and beyond.

[TotalEnergies logo]