Rute Foundation Systems, Incorported — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 16g

Description

This SBIR Phase 1 proposal describes an innovative technology that can reduce the installed cost of agricultural solar systems. It is a new system design that optimizes solar and agriculture production through novel mounting and racking designs. We seek to address the coming land competition between photovoltaic (PV) deployments and agriculture. RUTE’s system is a co-located solar PV and agriculture (agrophotovoltaics - APV) system providing added revenue source for farmers with nominal reduction of farmland acreage. The best agricultural land is also the best PV land. Development for population growth will also compete for available land. As solar power continues to improve its economics, new viable locations will be sought. Unfortunately, solar installations cover a lot of land, approximately 5 acres per MW. The country is currently building 15GW per year, equivalent to 75,000 acres. A recent paper by Oregon State University has identified cropland and grassland as the best land to develop PV resources. These geographies have light winds and moderate temperatures and lower vapor pressure which increases PV efficiency by 2 W/m2 over barren land. This insight will exacerbate pressure to convert vital, scarce arable resources to mutually exclusive PV generation and create significant side effects of increasing food prices and reducing food exports. RUTE developed cable-stayed, pole-mount technology to support PV generation above the cropland and grasslands (known as RPV). RPV will provide sufficient height clearance and minimal disruption at a cost substantially below suspended canopy structures being considered by the National Energy Renewable Energy Lab and others. In Phase 1, RUTE will construct and test a pilot 3x2 pole array using our cable stayed methodology. The system will be tested for stability in a harsh wind setting on Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, North Dakota. Vibration data will be analyzed and used to create a dampening system to maintain the array for the life of the solar panels. A cost-effective dual use array would facilitate the co-use of solar energy in some of the world’s most productive land. It has also been shown that certain crops (e.g. leafy greens perform better under shade, therefore the RUTE agrophotovoltaic system may be more than a sum of its parts. RUTE’s efficient use of materials will make it the lowest cost solution for the best quality power.