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How Solar Supports Ukraine

- Adam Clare

Solar panels on grass

In the ongoing war caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine power plants have been attacked by both sides to hurt military and civilian operations. Beyond the obvious horrors of war the loss of power generation makes heating homes more challenging and people are suffering as a result. As Russia continues to target large power installations the solution is to turn to distributed power generation, and the best for of distributed power is renewable power. There’s now an organization in Ukraine installing solar power throughout the country to improve reliability of the grid and make it harder for Russia to cause blackouts.

What’s more, if we all follow Ukraine’s lead and get off of centralized power generation and move to a renewably powered electric economy then Russia would have fewer customers to sell oil to.

Hospitals save thousands of lives every day providing medical care to the civilian population, and for that they need an uninterrupted electricity supply. Water utilities provide water supply to the population. Solar power plants are a long-term solution to the problem, a reliable protection against possible worsening of the situation, and also one of the first steps for Ukrainian municipalities towards the green recovery of the country.

The non-government organization Ecoclub with the support of the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine, launched the Solar Aid For Ukraine Project ITS PURPOSE IS TO PROVIDE UKRAINIAN CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WITH A RELIABLE SOURCE OF ELECTRICITY, WHICH IS SOLAR POWER PLANTS

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Solar Retaining Wall Goes Live in Switzerland

- Adam Clare

solar retaining wall alongside a road

It might seem odd to put solar panels on the side of walls in a region with mountains, but that’s exactly what’s happening in Switzerland. One of the cantons in the country is looking to be powered by at least 40% renewables by 2035 (which is quite achievable); with terrain being scarce it’s hard to place large solar installations. However, retaining walls in some areas get a lot of sunlight depending on their orientations (south facing would generate more for example) and with geography like Switzerland’s there are a lot of retaining walls. The cantons of Appenzell Ausserhoden’s first installation generations 325kW which is the equivalent of 52 Swiss households.

The PV system was anchored on and in the masonry using an adhesive technique. An anchoring depth of a maximum of 90 mm could not be exceeded so that the retaining wall would not be adversely affected.

Due to the close proximity to the asphalt, the solar panels’ components are subject to exceptional corrosion requirements and are anodized for protection. Indirect components are made of aluminum – only the screw anchors are made of stainless steel.

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Iraq Looking to the Sun to Power its Future

- Adam Clare

Solar panels on grass

Iraqi oil fields have a lot of fossil fuels ready to be exported, and that’s a problem. The Iraqi population, like many oil states, don’t benefit from the cheap oil that corporations extract and export. As a result Iraqis have now turned to solar power for their local energy needs. The current installation of solar panels is relatively small, but they are gaining in popularity and being a nation that gets a lot of sun we can only hope that more people see the light. Let’s keep oil in the ground and put up solar panels.

In nearby Sulaymaniyah, the second-largest city in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, only 500 out of the 600,000 households are equipped with solar panels, said Sirwan Mahmud, a spokesman for the province’s electricity department.

Solar power had seen “rapid progression”, he said, after the region’s parliament adopted incentives in 2021 to compensate households for any excess electricity that they generate.

The region aims to build three commercial solar power plants with a total capacity of 75 megawatts (MW), he added.

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Kenyan Farm Foments Fossil Free Fertilizer

- Adam Clare


Yes, fertilizers exist that don’t make use of fossil fuels; however, the use of petoreluaem based fertilizers have become a mainstay of modern industrial agriculture. This use of fossil fuels for fertilizer has led to the agriculture sector’s carbon footprint being as large as it is. The transportation of the fuel then as a fertilizer leads to large bills and emissions. Now, a farm in Kenya has started producing fertilizer using solar power. The process uses water to create hydrogen which then gets some nitrogen to form liquid ammonia, a key fertilizer.

Green ammonia, made from water using clean power, promises to curb the climate impact of fertilizer. If produced on site, it could have the added benefit of insulating growers from supply shocks.

“The average bag of fertilizer in sub-Saharan Africa travels 10,000 kilometers,” Talus founder Hiro Iwanaga told Bloomberg. With a small green ammonia plant, like the one coming online in Kenya, “you can locally produce a critical raw material, carbon free

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Better Solar Helps Bitter Hops

- Adam Clare
beer

Agrivoltaic setups aren’t new to regular readers of this site as we’ve seen many times that certain crops benefit from the shade solar panels provide; and, the solar panels benefit the farmers by producing clean energy. Now we know that hops, which flavour beer, thrive under solar panels. A German experiment with a special solar setup for hops has proven more successful than expected since the hops fared better against disease.

Which crops thrive under solar panels depends on many factors, and for a crop like hops a default solar field setup is not a good one. Hops like to grow straight up which means that the solar panels need to be elevated high off the ground. The hops then grow up to the solar panels and get lots of benefit from the cooling effects of the panels themselves.

The pilot project — a collaboration between Wimmer and local solar technology company Hallertauer Handelshaus — was set up in the fall of last year. The electricity made at this farm can power around 250 households, and the hops get shade they’ll need more often as climate change turbocharges summer heat.

Solar panels atop crops has been gaining traction in recent years as incentives and demand for clean energy skyrocket. Researchers look into making the best use of agricultural land, and farmers seek ways to shield their crops from blistering heat, keep in moisture and potentially increase yields. The team in Germany says its effort is the first agrivoltaic project that’s solely focused on hops, but projects have sprouted around the world in several countries for a variety of grains, fruits and vegetables.

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