A farm in Bavaria is covering its hops with solar panels, providing electricity to 250 households and shading the plants from the increasingly scorching summer heat in the process.

Hops for beer flourish under solar panels. They’re not the only crop thriving in the shade.::A farm in Bavaria is covering its hops with solar panels, providing electricity to 250 households and shading the plants from the increasingly scorching summer heat in the process.

  • @evasive_chimpanzeeEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    Yeah, there’s actually some better pictures from presumably the same company linked in the article about apples.. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy people are trying out different stuff like this, but it doesn’t seem like the juice is worth the squeeze in this instance. Some quick numbers I found showed that average household energy consumption in Germany is about 4 MWh, and 200 MWh/acre is what you would expect from a traditional solar installation. Should be able to power 50 homes per acre. He’s getting ~8.