The Eurecat technology centre and Lenium, a company specialising in developing and financing turnkey industrial projects, renewable energies and R&D and innovation initiatives, are to develop energy self-sufficient greenhouses by fitting organic photovoltaic panels which enable both power generation and plant growth.
The project involves embedding semi-transparent printed organic cells which “use light synergistically, meaning that the panels capture and generate photovoltaic energy while allowing enough light to get through for plants to grow,” comments Martí Gibert Roca, a researcher in Eurecat’s Functional Printing & Embedded Systems Unit.
The initiative is “a further step towards building a greenhouse model which is self-sufficient in energy and water, designed for sustainable farming in environments with limited resources,” notes Esteve Lafita Ferré, founding partner of Lenium alongside Hicham Elbokhari, who says the project “was inspired by the goal of generating a positive impact wherever it is implemented at all environmental and social levels.”
The idea is to “power an irrigation system with photovoltaic energy based on capturing ambient moisture, thus crafting a completely self-sufficient greenhouse,” adds Eurecat researcher Katerina Nikolaidou.
This will involve an initial stage in which the facility’s requirements will be analysed and a work plan designed, followed by a second stage in which a proof of concept will be conducted through testing in a relevant environment.
The tests will be carried out in a real-world environment under simulated solar conditions and with controlled radiation, temperature and humidity to “strike a balance between the transparency and performance of the organic cells and demonstrate that it is possible to power an irrigation system based on moisture capture in a self-sufficient system,” points out Eurecat researcher Paula Pinyol Castillo.
