Photovoltaics in agriculture
Large and commercial storage tanks require more extensive planning than domestic storage tanks. We support agricultural businesses as well as industrial and commercial enterprises in finding the right solution for their individual application:
- Do I need a storage unit? Yes? No?
- How big does my memory need to be?
- What power must I be able to charge and discharge at what time?
- Which cell technology is right for me?
- What does an energy management system look like?
- How is my existing system and an extension integrated?
- How does the system monitoring and control work?
Big topic: the emergency power supply!
- Does my system have to be capable of emergency power supply?
- What loads do I need to cover in an emergency (e.g. milking robots)?
- How long must my building be able to be supplied? How can I reload?
- Must it be possible to switch between mains and stand-alone operation without interruption?
- Can/may a PV system still operate at all if the grid has failed?
Modern energy in agriculture - as individual as your farm!
Many questions arise today - these can only be answered individually!
Clever energy management: SmartFarm2 research project
We are part of the joint project SmartFarm2 - Autonomous EMS for rural areas
Owners of agricultural businesses or other SMEs in rural areas face insurmountable challenges
The need to increase the share of renewable energies in energy generation is hardly questioned any more. Not least due to the current events in Ukraine. But how this can be implemented in specific cases is an unsolvable question for most decision-makers. The SmartFarm 2 project is taking a closer look at farms in particular, but also at SMEs in rural areas. The owners of these companies are faced with the decision of whether to invest in renewable energies and, if so, to what extent:
- Should it be the 10 kWp PV system or rather the 30 kWp, which is just about exempt from the EEG levy, or even the 100 kWp system?
- Is it worth investing in an additional battery storage system to temporarily store the surplus energy?
- Existing PV systems will no longer be eligible for EEG remuneration in the next few years. Should the systems continue to be operated? How can the electricity generated be used?
If you want to answer these and many other questions, you always have to ask yourself: "How much of the electricity I generate can I use myself?" Feeding self-generated electricity into the grid is hardly profitable. The aim must be to consume as much of the self-generated electricity as possible so that less has to be purchased from the public grid. On the one hand, this increases the financial advantage for the companies and, on the other, decentralized energy generation and use helps to relieve the burden on the public grid.
The SmartFarm 2 project aims to demonstrate the potential for optimizing self-consumption and implement it as an example. To this end, a test field with 101 real demonstrators (dairy farms, pig farms, greenhouses, schools, etc.) is to be equipped with very easy-to-use sensor technology in order to record the high-resolution, time-of-day-dependent consumer and producer data that is not yet available. Based on this data, the economic potential of self-consumption optimization can be demonstrated using AI methods and mathematical optimization algorithms. A highly automated energy management system (EMS) is then developed on this basis. SmartFarm 2 started on February 1, 2021 and is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.