Artificial intelligence (AI) use is everywhere. You can’t even do a simple search on the Internet anymore without the AI servers spinning up and giving you a summary you don’t want. AI reads our emails. AI helps us decide what to eat for breakfast. AI use has become so prevalent that AI-based energy use is straining the electrical system and impacting large-scale electrical grid planning. Some have even said that energy will be the limiting factor in AI growth. Calls for sustainable AI, where we would use sustainable renewable energy to power AI, come at a time when solar photovoltaic technology provides the lowest cost electricity in history. Not surprisingly, solar energy has been experiencing incredible growth. Both of these growth sectors, AI and solar now create land use conflict with farming. This may seem like an impossible problem to solve. Fortunately, the concept of agrivoltaics, where we purposely put solar on farmland to help the crops, provides a solution to this land use conflict for solar and AI alike.
Data Centers for AI need Power and Solar Agrivoltaics Can Supply It
A new study provides the first analysis of agrivoltaic systems’ potential to support data center electricity loads across different U.S. states to help mitigate this issue. Using state-level data center energy consumption and modeled agrivoltaic generation potential, the analysis explores how much of the digital sector’s demand could realistically be met with agrivoltaics as well as how much farmland would need solar energy investments to cover AI loads within the states that have the largest data centers.
The analysis looked at two types of agrivoltaics- vertical and single axis tracker solar because both of them could be integrated into farms without bothering the farmers. Vertical agrivoltaics are essentially solar fences. These fences are spaced out far enough that the farmer can drive farming equipment like a tractors, combines, etc. down the rows without hitting them. Single axis tracker solar arrays for agrivoltaics are similarly spaced out. The big difference is they track the sun during the day and get more energy per installed unit power. When the farmer is going to do farming they park themselves in the vertical position. Both of these types of solar agrivoltaics barely impact the sunlight hitting the crops and are an easy fit for pretty much any type of farming. Think wheat fields with some fences in them. Perhaps the most interesting part is these fences would act as wind breaks and would be expected to increase the amount of food coming off of the same farm. Dozens of crops from wheat to potatoes to every vegetable you can’t get your kids to eat actually increases crop production with agrivoltaics. Agrivoltaics acts as a shield to protect the crops from too much sun and heat. This is why agrivoltaics is a multi-billion dollar industry growing quickly – even the Vatican is now 100% powered by agrivoltaics.
Agrivoltaics On Less Than 2% Cover AI Energy
The results of the study show that vertical agrivoltaics installations required only between 0.003–2% of farmland across the targeted states, which is basically nothing. Single axis tracker agrivoltaics installations required 0.001–0.548%. So to be clear, the AI energy crisis could be averted by putting up some single axis trackers on at most 0.5% of land in not-particularly agriculturally rich states.
It is clear that agrivoltaics provides a technically viable method of meeting the energy demands of AI growth in the U.S. while increasing food production for a wide range of crops already shown to benefit from agrivoltaic microclimates.
