90: A Growth Industry? Talking about Agrivoltaics 

The time limits some put on themselves is very sad indeed.

Yes, I'd also appreciate a deeper dive. Especially in a couple of years or so, when this "technology" might have caught on a bit more. Here in Spain with ever-increasing water scarcity, I think this would be a great approach,especially due to a lot of sunshine. Great episode and great guest.

Appreciate the feedback. I don’t limit my videos by time, but use it as a rough guide. I let the topic dictate the final length. It’s about flow and making sure the story keeps people engaged throughout.

@@StillTBD Just to clarify, as rereading my original comment, I'm afraid a line got axed somehow making it less than clear. What I meant is that I think the videos length and depth are perfectly fine as they are, but, in a simiar way as the podcasts themselves expand the videos, it may be interesting to (at least sometimes) have some extra companion videos (maybe even outside the main channel itself) to house "all we couldn't fit in". Or maybe that's already the objective of the podcast, being able to talk a bit more about the subject without the need for extensive video edits and I'm just being redundant :p Anyway, great work, guys

@@drillerdev4624 gotcha! This podcast is a little bit of that attempt, but you’re right that it could go further. Might be interesting to go super deep like that here from time to time.

It’s interesting how Biosphere 2 has been mostly forgotten.

Become a patron of the Undecided channel, join the Undecided discord channel and drop me a note there.

We need this EVERYWHERE.

@@rogerstarkey5390 Agreed but..........

Have you seen the study about the effect of covering the Sahara with solar panels?

@@PaleGhost69 Can you elaborate? I would like to learn more. Which study (links please) and what is the point you are trying to make? In a broader sense: everything, literally everything we do as a species on this planet has an impact. What we need to consider is how these effects add up and whether or not we think they are desirable or not. If not, what can we do to mitigate them?

One could still do a diverse mix of crops under panels, as long as they are short. You could run a very mixed 6-12 species cover crop mix for grazing for example or you could strip crop alternating crops in strips wide enough to combine harvest.

Tony beat me to it. I still don’t see this as an agrivoltaics vs. issue. We can do both. This isn’t a solution for every farm in every region. We wouldn’t want to do that at all (and don’t need to). It’s a tool in the tool chest that we should use where it makes sense. I do agree with you 💯 that monoculture farming is highly problematic. Regenerative farming and permaculture are much better approaches. I’ve been thinking of doing a video on that.

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I think an ideal power storage for agrivoltaics would be liquid air battery. In addition to storing the power, that setup would provide refrigeration/freezing and can create clean inert gasses like pure CO2 or Ar, which can be used to store and pack food grown under the agrivoltaic

Thanks!

The central valley of California is the most productive Farmland in the US and one of the busiest trucking corridors (i5 interstate freeway) passes through it. It would be the ideal place to put agrivoltaics to power EV charging, especially for the coming EV semi trucks which will use a LOT of power.

Good video topic idea.

😂 Nope

There's an idea! "Produce Hydrogen! Essentially throw 66% of the energy away!" How about "Build a battery.... (Whatever form) save 90% of the energy for later!" ?

@@rogerstarkey5390 I like it. They said in Africa it might be a solution to power entire communities, probably without the need for batteries. Connecting to a grid would be ideal. Storing it for later use might be the next best thing. Batteries would increase the upfront costs though. Hydrogen production, while less than ideal, might be the next best thing for places that can't connect to a grid or store it for later use.

Liquid air battery provides other farm benefits such as providing commercial scale refrigeration and inert gasses (co2, n2, Ar) which can be used for packing and storing food produced by the farm.

@@rogerstarkey5390 It depends on what you want to achieve. If your goal is to produce hydrogen in an environmentally friendly way, than the idea that Dave proposes is actually a very good one, since it decouples the solar array from the of having a grid connection, making it suitable for more places. Sure, if your goal is to preserve or use as much of the energy produced by the panels, hydrogen conversion is not a very efficient approach. We currently are producing massive amounts of hydrogen by a proces called steam reforming, which is essentially a very dirty polluting proces. If we can replace that process with hydrolysis powered by solar, you indirectly offset a great amount of CO2 (and other) emissions. And if you use that hydrogen to reform steel production (currently one of the most polluting industries) with hydrogen based steel production (something which for instance Tata Steel, on of the larger steel producers in the world is now migrating to) then the demand for hydrogen produced in an environmentally friendly way is actually a very promising course of action. So it boils down to the amoutn of value that can be created, not the amount of energy preserved.

Not really, for a number of reasons: 1 there just isn't that much toxic material in them 2 the vast majority of the metals are enclosed and chemically bound up with other components. Some can be leached, but a very small portion. And since there's not much to Begich, you end up with a really sma amount in the ground. Now, the one thing that I can imagine could happen, is if some plant happens to have an affinity for some random chemical component that is being leached, and could somehow concentrate it it. (kind of like how apples contain arsenic, far in excess of the concentration in the soil) It's not common, but it's something that could conceivably occur.

Let's see. The panels have a sealed back. They don't sit horizontally. Water runs off between the rows of plants. Any damaged panel would be replaced. The runoff water from several thousand panels would result in dilution of any residue. There's more pollution in the air (rain?) Than would be collected from incidental exposure of any panel...... But, apart from the above, you may have a point.....🙄

Don't forget our current system is having the same problem from the equipment, if not worse. Not to mention, all the toxic chemicals that are being used as fertilizers and pesticides.

No (short answer). Take engineering courses, try to understand diffusion of chemicals, and become intimate with MSDS (long answer).

Electromechanical devices do not come with MSDS and are not required under law or I should say SDSs

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