From pv magazine France
Swiss company Insolight has announced the construction of a 3,000 square meter agrivoltaic greenhouse in the commune of Sames in southwestern France's Basque country. With an installed capacity of 190 kW, the installation is expected to produce some 260 MWh of energy per year, which equals the consumption of around 50 households.
The electricity will be self-consumed, with the surplus to be resold to French utility company EDF, in accordance with the country's S21 photovoltaic decree.
The site consists of a greenhouse covered with semi-transparent solar panels and removable shading screens to adapt the shading. The owners of the Etchélécu Farm hope to increase their strawberry production by nearly 15%.
The farmers faced a very low harvest in 2018 due to climatic hazards. To protect their crops, they built a new greenhouse equipped with shade panels, a rainwater recovery system, and solar panels.
The greenhouse holds about 15,000 strawberry plants in trough planters about 1 meter from the ground. Their harvest supplies restaurants on the Basque coast.
Insolight's agrivoltaic greenhouse model is already in use in Switzerland at the Agroscope agricultural research center in Conthey. Since 2022, they have tested the solar panels on a raspberry plantation. They will evaluate the results from 2026, focusing on the effects of dynamic light conditions on plant development.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.