Researchers stunned by results after installing solar panels over crops: 'High potential'

Scientists teamed up with rice farmers in Japan to harvest a new kind of crop from their fields — solar power. 

According to Interesting Engineering, University of Tokyo researchers helped install a slate of solar panels three meters (about 10 feet) above farmers' rice paddies in Miyada, a village in the Nagano Prefecture. The pilot study's findings suggest a bright future for this kind of teamwork between agriculture and energy projects. 

The main push to combine solar power with farming is about available space. Feeding a country and building solar fields both require acres of open area, which is a particularly scarce resource in Japan, as Interesting Engineering explained. 

However, if solar projects can piggyback on farmland without disrupting its crops, then the nation can still leverage solar in its transition to cleaner, cheaper energy — and farmers could earn extra income along the way. 

Plus, innovative collaborations like this one help conserve crucial natural resources and replace polluting energy sources, such as coal and gas, with a safer alternative.

To work out the kinks in this kind of agrivoltaic system, researchers monitored the panels and crops for two straight growing seasons. During that time, they flexed and tilted the equipment every day to change how much light reached the rice underneath. 

Interesting Engineering reported that in the first season, the rice yield matched 75% of a neighboring field. The team made refinements in the second season, and that number shot up to 85%. Both harvests met Japan's highest grain quality grade. 

Meanwhile, the solar panels were hard at work just above the paddies. In one year, the field efficiently produced almost 44,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, Interesting Engineering reported.

That amount of power could have supplied a full year of electricity for at least five Japanese citizens in 2024, who generated roughly 22 kilowatt hours per day that year, per Our World in Data.

These results show the potential of layering different land uses on top of one another. The study comes at a good time, as Japan looks poised to lean hard on solar in the coming years, Interesting Engineering reported.

Should we be harnessing the ocean to power our homes? Absolutely 👍 Leave it be 👎 It depends 🤔 I'm not sure 🤷 Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

The research team is not done yet, either. They aim to improve the system even further, possibly by using AI to optimize the changing angles of the solar panels throughout the year. Making the equipment out of more transparent or efficient materials is also under consideration, per the outlet.

"We hope this work serves to show high potential for agriPV systems both as a renewable energy source and revenue growth opportunities," the researchers wrote in the study. 

The full findings are published in the Journal of Photonics for Energy.

Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.