Solar energy harvesting for smart farming using nanomaterial and machine learning

Abstract

Farming is very labour intensive and needs timely action. In smart farming many activities of farming are conducted by machines which run on electricity. Electricity is one of the key elements of smart farming. The quality and cost of the agriculture produce are mostly determined by quality of the available energy and energy utilized. Though India is agriculture rich country, many rural areas are still not provided with sufficient electricity for the farming. In the current scenario of depleting natural energy resources like fossil fuels, using electricity generated from fossil fuels is expensive. Hence, there is a strong need to shift to nonconventional renewable and natural energy resources. Solar energy is one such energy available in abundance in India, however, the existing solar energy harvesting technologies which uses solar cell technology is able to convert very little portion of the available solar energy. The conversion efficiency of solar cells is found to be 16-18%. The authors in this paper present a more efficient solar energy harvesting technology which uses nanomaterial for improving conversion efficiency and machine learning technology to maximize the collection of solar radiation by continuously tracking the path of the SUN in all the seasons.

Digital Innovation Enabled Nanomaterial Manufacturing; Machine Learning Strategies and Green Perspectives

“…It was shown that the nanomaterials can introduce actual improvements in the maximum solar energy that can be harvested. More specifically, it was revealed that graphene can lead to a 40% increment of harvesting capacity in comparison with silicon solar cells, based on the sun path tracking with machine learning, which is expected to create new opportunities in the smart farming of renewable and eco-friendly energy alternatives [ 130 ].…”

Novel Materials for Urban Farming (Adv. Mater. 25/2022)

“…In short, though climatic control in an indoor farm may require a huge energy input, this energy requirement can be reduced by using innovative materials solutions such as smart windows and cooling coatings. Furthermore, electricity generation based on novel functional materials or devicesperovskite solar cells, [214][215][216] triboelectric nanogenerators, [217][218][219] thermoelectric generators [220][221][222] can become an important energy source for sensors (Section 2.6), pumps, LEDs, etc. in future sustainable and smart farms.…”

Novel Materials for Urban Farming

“…In short, though climatic control in an indoor farm may require a huge energy input, this energy requirement can be reduced by using innovative materials solutions such as smart windows and cooling coatings. Furthermore, electricity generation based on novel functional materials or devices – perovskite solar cells, [ 213–215 ] triboelectric nanogenerators, [ 216–218 ] thermoelectric generators [ 219–221 ] – can become an important energy source for sensors (Section 2.6), pumps, LEDs, etc., in future sustainable and smart farms.…”