Here’s a win-win opportunity if you grow grapes for a living.
A startup in Israel is integrating solar panels into vineyards.
They generate electricity (and revenue). And they give the farmer precise control over how much sunshine reaches the vine.
The solar panels are fitted right above the grapes, tilting throughout the day – either to capture as much sunlight as possible for energy production, or to shade the vine to delay ripening and improve the flavor of the grapes.
Generating solar energy in vineyards (agrivoltaics) is not a new idea. The challenge is to do it better than the competition by causing minimum disruption to the farmer while providing maximum benefits.
That’s the fine balance that SolarWine believes it has achieved with low-level folding solar panels that don’t get in the way of harvesting machines.
Income from grapes and electricity
There’s a complex juggle between generating solar energy and cultivating great-tasting grapes. As you’d expect these days, this is made possible by AI.
“What we’re doing with machine learning is to control the panels in order to balance and optimize the energy of the sun,” Eli Safra, SolarWine’s chief technical officer, tells ISRAEL21c. “Exactly the right amount goes to the grape, and any excess goes to generating electricity.”
So what’s more profitable for the farmer – grapes or electricity? The top-line answer is electricity, but it’s not that simple.
Energy production is changing rapidly, says Safra, and nobody knows what might eclipse solar in the coming years.
That’s why he’s convinced that SolarWine achieves the perfect balance.
“We create a business model in which the energy production actually helps the vineyard,” he says. “So if one day energy production is down and the vineyard is up, you are good. If on the other day, when your vineyard is down, energy is up, you are also good.
“We want the farmer to stand on two legs, to have another income opportunity from the energy production as well as the field.”
Extreme weather
SolarWine is the brainchild of Dan Goldblat of Kerem Yerucham (Yerucham Winery), down in Israel’s Negev Desert; and Safra, a data scientist.
They served together 30 years ago in the IDF’s elite reconnaissance unit Sayeret Matkal and joined forces in 2023 to develop a patented AI system that would optimize crop yields, reduce costs, protect vineyards from extreme weather and provide extra revenue.
It does all that using the existing poles that support vines. Unlike rival systems, it doesn’t disrupt the mechanical harvesting.
There’s another critical advantage of using SolarWine, and that has to do with addressing the problems of climate change.
For centuries, the climate was largely predictable, so farmers were able to draw on their knowledge of what had and hadn’t worked in previous generations.
But that’s all changed. “When we talk about climate change, we’re talking about really hot heatwaves, we’re talking about sudden storms, and we’re talking about extreme weather,” says Naor Kanfi, SolarWine’s business development manager.
“You can get a month’s worth of rain in three days. Sudden rain in March or April, when the grape is just starting to grow, will damage the quality of the grape.”
The solar panels, controlled by AI, protect the vines from excess sunshine and shield the grapes from excess rainfall and strong winds. They allow the farmer to create a microclimate, as never before, and to carry on growing grape varieties that would otherwise no longer suit the new weather conditions.
Standing in line
SolarWine installed its first panels on a small section of vine (half a dunam, 500 square meters) at Goldblat’s winery last year, and plans to increase that to another three dunams.
But regulation is a big challenge in terms of expanding the business. Governments, here in Israel and beyond, are worried that farmers will install solar panels, decide they’re more profitable than their crop, and stop farming altogether.
“Farmers are standing in line to get our solution. The only problem that we have is regulation,” says Safra. “On the one hand, the country needs a lot more energy, but on the other hand, they block you from putting up solar panels because they are afraid about food security.
“The Ministry of Agriculture is concerned that farmers will see they’re getting more income from selling energy, so they will stop cultivating their fields.”
He says that as a consequence, SolarWine is now partnering with an energy company in Israel because “they know how to handle regulation.”
SolarWine is about to sign a contract to produce around 120 megawatts over the next four years, enough electricity to power a small city.
Other target markets are wine regions in California and Europe.
SolarWine, based in Yerucham, has 10 employees and has so far raised $600,000 in funding and grants.
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