The impact of PV on peatlands

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From pv magazine Germany

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Fraunhofer ISE), together with the Universities of Greifswald and Hohenheim, and the Thünen Institute, has launched a research project to investigate the impact of PV power plants on peatland.

The partners essentially want to answer the question of whether the installation of photovoltaic systems can provide farmers with an incentive to rewet peatland soils.

“The parallel planning of a photovoltaic system and rewetting is completely new territory,” explained Agnes Wilke, project manager for peatland photovoltaics at Fraunhofer ISE. “Within the scope of the project, we want to test the best approach for peatland photovoltaic systems through concrete implementation.”

The core of the project is the research of peatland photovoltaics at different scales. On an experimental site in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in northern Germany, the partners are building system designs on a total of six hectares of a fen that is still used agriculturally. The site has different elevation heights, solar module types, and foundations. Each system variation is being examined in combination with three different rewetting conditions and water levels, with particular emphasis on ecological issues.

On a material test site in Baden-Württemberg, the project team is also testing different materials, coatings, and methods for the foundations of the peatland photovoltaic systems on a small scale. In addition, the effects of shading by the systems on moorland plants are being investigated in pot experiments.

On an approximately 200-hectare photovoltaic area on a moor in Lower Saxony, the scientists are also investigating large-scale processes, such as the greenhouse gas balance at the landscape level.

Jürgen Kreyling from the University of Greifswald points out the importance of only developing drained and heavily degraded peatlands for the dual use of carbon storage in peat and solar power generation. “We must prevent peatlands from being used for the installation of photovoltaic systems without also rewetting them,” said Kreyling, noting that this would lead to continuous greenhouse gas emissions from the peatlands.

The interdisciplinary project consortium is broadly based. The participating disciplines include photovoltaics, economics, law, and a broad spectrum of ecology, covering topics ranging from hydrology to biodiversity and plant growth to greenhouse gases. The project team is also investigating the possibility of additional agricultural land use through paludiculture.

Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research is providing €7 million ($7.6 million) for the project, called “MoorPower,” over a period of three and a half years.

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