A Greenwich team showcased UK research on the latest solar technology which can revolutionise plant-growing at home and in commercial horticulture.
Show visitors were fascinated to see the stand in the Chelsea Grand Pavilion, which included a domestic solar greenhouse and a soft-fruit polytunnel fitted with solar. The interactive research displays showed how plants sense and use light, and how automated systems can exploit the generated power. Plants on the stand were grown in Kent by the farm business that has been collaborating with Greenwich researchers to test the new technology on commercial fruit crops.
Visitors saw how a solar energy business, Polysolar Ltd, developed fittings for new, flexible, solar panels on commercial polytunnels for renewable electricity production, with plant researchers showing can how these could shade the crop from excess sunshine. Coloured, transparent glass solar panels were fitted to glasshouses for domestic or farm use. Both structures enable dual functionality, for growing food and generating solar power at the same time on the same land — and the team’s priority was to demonstrate how retrofitting panels to existing plant growth facilities could avoid the high costs for users from new buildings.
The Greenwich research into pioneering agrivoltaic systems combined renewable energy generation with agricultural production, showing how new fields of productive land are not always needed for large solar installations, and that shading installed does not decrease yield from the crop.
This technology has been running as part of the ‘Electric Berry’ project, hosted at Hugh Lowe Farms in Kent, a soft fruit business run by the Regan family for five generations. The scientists from the University of Greenwich and partners Polysolar Ltd tested the flexible and glass solar panels with several types of crop. Fruit, root, seed and leafy crops were grown under tinted glass panels, and flexible panels have now been installed for 3 years over the farm’s commercial plantings of strawberries and raspberries, with great success.
The team at Greenwich is led by Dr Elinor Thompson.
On hand to answer questions throughout the week were the PhD students in the project research team: Parth Darji and Olywaseyi Ademola (pictured collecting a Silver award).
Greenwich Postdoctoral student Dr Kexin Wang and University of Cambridge collaborator Dr Paolo Bombelli were also present at stand during show.
