Solar cells promise energy neutrality for greenhouses

This is the claim of engineers, plant biologists and physicists at North Carolina State University (NC State) whose new modelling study estimated energy use for greenhouses growing tomatoes at locations in Arizona, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Their findings are published in Joule.

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“Plants only use some wavelengths of light for photosynthesis, and the idea is to create greenhouses that make energy from that unused light while allowing most of the photosynthetic band of light to pass through,” said Brendan O’Connor, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State.

“We’re able to do this by using organic solar cells, because they allow us to tune the spectrum of light that the solar cell absorbs – so we can focus on using mostly wavelengths of light that plants don’t use. However, until now it wasn’t clear how much energy a greenhouse could capture if it was using these semi-transparent, wavelength selective, organic solar cells.”