Agrivoltaics gains strong momentum in South Africa

Transcript

00:00Agrivoltaics involves using land for both agriculture and energy generation, and it

00:12is gaining popularity in the country's agricultural sector.

00:17This approach not only provides farmers with energy independence, but also boosts their

00:22revenue by generating solar energy on their farms.

00:28Farmers can sell this energy through power purchase agreements, while also enhancing

00:33land efficiency by installing solar panels.

00:36It's coming about that there's going to be a great liberalization of the electricity sector,

00:41where solar farms on one farm can then supply solar farms adjacent or down the road.

00:49At the moment, it's very difficult to get that right, because you have to wheel through

00:54airscarf. So I'd say going forward, you can expect a lot more demand coming from the agricultural

00:59sector, both on agrivoltaics, but then also on the wheeling and plugging into the trading pool.

01:06By installing agrivoltaic systems, farmers can sell energy to neighboring farms during the

01:13off-peak harvest season. This not only supports their financial operations, but also powers

01:20packhouses, machinery and irrigation equipment. Agrivoltaic systems have many applications

01:26within the agricultural sector, including being elevated above both crops and livestock,

01:32as well as being integrated with greenhouses. Umbani Energy Investments is among the earliest

01:39adopters of agrivoltaics and has several farms where installation is planned. Through an initial

01:46pilot program they successfully grew fruits and vegetables while also generating energy for sale.

01:54They now plan to invest further in agrivoltaics. So we started with the agrivoltaic pilot in the

02:00rules of Limpopo where we saw quite a few benefits, but also some of the challenges. So we plan now to

02:10take the new learnings from that use case and to scale it up to a small scale CNI project where we'll have

02:16an overhead agrivoltaic structure that's powering a farm that will be producing strawberries.

02:24New legislation will establish a framework that allows the agricultural sector to fully harness

02:30the benefits of agrivoltaics, paving the way for a more sustainable future.