Organic solar powered greenhouse performance optimization and global economic opportunity

Ravishankar, Eshwar; Booth, Ronald E.; Hollinsworth, Joseph A.; Ade, Harald; Sederoff, Heike; DeCarolis, Joseph F.; O’Connor, Brendan

doi:10.1039/d1ee03474j

Cited by 30 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 56 publications

(106 reference statements)

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“…According to a global perspective study across diverse climates, the improvement of the net present value for organic solar powered greenhouse with dual crop productivity and energy generation was already estimated in contrast to conventional greenhouse systems. [478] We envision that the evolution of the learning curve and the succession of effective demonstrations from different ST-PV technologies would bring the blossoming of the greenhouseintegrated PV. As progress steps, first products with thin film a-Si:H [479] and LSC [480] are already available on the market, pointing out the interest in this concept.…”

Section: Challenges and Prospectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tunable Photovoltaics: Adapting Solar Cell Technologies to Versatile Applications

Meddeb

Götz‐Köhler

Neugebohrn

et al. 2022

Advanced Energy Materials

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solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass, to enable a steady mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, which are causing the planetary climate change and global warming. [5][6][7] Additionally, due to the economic development and the worldwide urbanization, a continuous rise of the global energy consumption across all key sectors, that is, power, heating, industry, and transport is occurring. This is expressed by an increase in the annual global electricity demand by 4.5% in 2021 corresponding to additional 1000 TWh. [4] Hence, strict criteria for the selection of competitive and abundant energy alternatives are imposed, requiring high yield at affordable prices. [8] The share of total renewables power generation excluding hydropower exceeded 3000 TWh in 2020, corresponding to almost 12% of the global electricity generation. [3] Considering an effective synergy between various sustainable energy candidates, solar photovoltaics (PV) have demonstrated great capabilities that can satisfy the requirements in the pathway towards 100% renewable electricity. [9][10][11][12] Owing to the research and development activities over the last decades, the power conversion efficiencies of solar cells (SC) have skyrocketed with a prolonged operation lifetime (>15 years) and a drastic plummeting in manufacturing costs (global average module selling price below $0.25 per W). [6,[13][14][15] The rapid universal deployment of PV resulted in a contribution of about 3.4% in the worldwide electricity generation in 2020. [3] Presently, the global installed PV capacity is approaching 1 TW and it is envisioned to reach ≈10 TW by 2030 and 30 to 70 TW by 2050. [16] Interestingly, along with massive electricity production using conventional solar power plants and rooftop solar panels, ancillary concepts of PV offer new strategies for supplying modern systems in versatile applications. [17][18][19] Moreover, diverse functionalities beyond solar energy harvesting can be afforded by adaptive PV, including aesthetic appearance, visual comfort and thermal management. [17,18,20,21] The distributed nature and the ubiquitous accessibility of multifunctional PV products are substantial features of solar PV in contrast to other renewable energies. However, traditional SCs dominating the market impose intrinsic optoelectronic and thermomechanical limitations, that prohibit their multifunctional utilization. To overcome these drawbacks, novel functional materials and innovative device architecture Solar photovoltaics (PV) offer viable and sustainable solutions to satisfy the growing energy demand and to meet the pressing climate targets. The deployment of conventional PV technologies is one of the major contributors of the ongoing energy transition in electricity power sector. However, the diversity of PV paradigms can open different opportunities for supplying modern systems in a wide range of terrestrial, marine, and aerospace applications. Such ubiquitous and versatile applications necessitate the development of PV technologies with customized desig...

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Section: Challenges and Prospectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Versatile Applications Of Tunable Pv Technologies Challenges...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tunable Photovoltaics: Adapting Solar Cell Technologies to Versatile Applications

Meddeb

Götz‐Köhler

Neugebohrn

et al. 2022

Advanced Energy Materials

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“…To have a meaningful impact on sustainable food production, these ST-OSC greenhouses also need to be able to produce a larger variety of crops in different climate zones. While we have modeled the potential for economic value with some crops (30), lower material costs and higher efficiency will provide a path to not only grow locally desirable vegetables from strawberries and beans to eggplants, but also row crops such as corn, wheat and root vegetables. Most of the improvements are expected to come from OSC efficiency increases, better materials and different systems like flexible OSC shades that can be used in greenhouses in a similar, more temporary way as current shading techniques and paint are applied.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One OSC crop production model considered only photosynthesis to calculate a crop growth factor based on the relative photosynthetic efficiency of each photon across PAR and predicted the effect of OSC transmission spectra on crop yield (Emmott, et al, 2015). A more complex model considered the red/blue (R/B) ratio of the OSC transmission spectrum as well as light intensity to begin to address the effect of altered spectra on photomorphogenesis (Ravishankar, et al, 2022). Growth and yield studies using peppers (Zisis, et al, 2019) and tomatoes (Waller, et al, 2021) have been promising in greenhouses partially covered with OSCs panels (~22% and ~50%, respectively).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond energy balance in agrivoltaic food production: Emergent crop traits from wavelength-selective solar cells

Charles

Edwards

Ravishankar

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Semi-transparent organic solar cells (ST-OSCs) offer new agrivoltaic opportunities to meet the growing demands for sustainable food production. The tailored absorption/transmission spectrum of ST-OSCs not only impacts the power generated, but also aspects of crop growth, development and responses to the biotic and abiotic environments. The general relationships between these variables are unknown. Here, we grow red oak leaf lettuce (Lactuca sativa), a traditional greenhouse crop, under three different ST-OSC filters and observe little overall differences on productivity in response to the altered light exposure. In contrast, several key traits involving nutrient content and nitrogen utilization as well as plant defense against herbivory and pathogens are modified over the controls under select OSCs. Overall, our genomic analysis reveals that lettuce production exhibits beneficial traits under exposure from select ST-OSCs. ST-OSCs integrated into greenhouses are, therefore, not only a promising technology for energy-neutral crop production as previously shown but can deliver benefits beyond those based on energy-balance considerations.

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Laminated Organic Photovoltaic Modules for Agrivoltaics and Beyond: An Outdoor Stability Study of All‐Polymer and Polymer:Small Molecule Blends

Rodríguez‐Martínez

Riera‐Galindo

Aguirre³

et al. 2022

Adv Funct Materials

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The integration of organic photovoltaic (OPV) modules on greenhouses is an encouraging practice to offset the energy demands of crop growth and provide extra functionality to dedicated farmland. Nevertheless, such OPV devices must meet certain optical and stability requirements to turn net zero energy greenhouse systems a reality. Here a donor:acceptor polymer blend is optimized for its use in laminated devices while matching the optical needs of crops. Optical modeling is performed and a greenhouse figure-of-merit is introduced to benchmark the trade-off between photovoltaic performance and transparency for both chloroplasts and humans. Balanced donor:acceptor ratios result in better-performing and more thermally stable devices than acceptor-enriched counterparts. The optimized polymer blend and state-of-theart polymer:small-molecule blends are next transferred to 25 cm 2 laminated modules processed entirely from solution and in ambient conditions. The modules are mounted on a greenhouse as standalone or 4-terminal tandem configurations and their outdoor stability is tracked for months. The study reveals degradation modes undetectable under laboratory conditions such as module delamination, which accounts for 10-20% loss in active area. Among the active layers tested, polymer:fullerene blends are the most stable and position as robust light harvesters in future building-integrated OPV systems.

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Organic solar powered greenhouse performance optimization and global economic opportunity

Abstract: Greenhouses conserve land and water while increasing crop production, making them an attractive system for low environmental impact agriculture. Yet, to achieve this goal, there is a need to reduce...

Cited by 30 publications

References 56 publications

Tunable Photovoltaics: Adapting Solar Cell Technologies to Versatile Applications

Tunable Photovoltaics: Adapting Solar Cell Technologies to Versatile Applications

Beyond energy balance in agrivoltaic food production: Emergent crop traits from wavelength-selective solar cells

Laminated Organic Photovoltaic Modules for Agrivoltaics and Beyond: An Outdoor Stability Study of All‐Polymer and Polymer:Small Molecule Blends

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