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Multitasking in Magenta: Colored Solar Panels Could Let Farms Grow Crops and Generate Electricity
Key Takeaways
- Semitransparent magenta solar panels generated renewable electricity while boosting blue and red wavelengths for broccoli grown beneath them at Kärrbo Prästgård farm in Sweden.
- Broccoli under the panels showed a 4.5-fold increase in sunlight use efficiency and reached the same size as open-field broccoli, but took 25 days longer to mature.
- The study, led by Silvia Ma Lu of Mälardalen University, is scheduled for publication Oct. 2 in Cell Reports Physical Science.
- Conventional dark-blue opaque panels can shade crops too heavily and reduce yields; semitransparent and colored panels aim to mitigate that.
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DT Editorial Team··via phys.org