The French company Sun’Agri, a pioneer in ”agrivoltaism”, has just come out with an exciting report. Agrivoltaism involves installing solar panels on top of agricultural crops. It has proven to be interesting also for vineyards. Sun’Agri has been experimenting for a few years in the south of France. The new report shows that solar panels can increase yields quite substantially: 45% for grenache blanc, 25% for marselan, 40% for non-irrigated grenache noir and 10% for chardonnay.
The idea is to shade the vines while the panels produce energy. The panels are set up several meters above the vines and rotate to allow more light to reach them on overcast days. The panels protect the vines from the burning sun during heat waves.
The result is lower alcohol content (around 1% lower), higher acidity and later harvest (7–9 days). All this is positive in view of climate change. Whether it is compatible with the rules of the appellations (e.g. not to affect the plant environment) is another question.
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(The picture shows another type of photovoltaic solar panels.)
