Renewable energies are becoming a key aspect of all industrial and productive activities. And agriculture is no exception. Specifically, in irrigation, they are beginning to be a more profitable and sustainable option than conventional ones.
Farmers are opting to produce the food which feeds the world, taking sustainability criteria into account. Thus, we can see how they have promoted the use of digital technologies to reduce inputs, integrated pest control to reduce pesticides or the application of renewable energies on farms.
The latter, renewable energies, are very interesting for improving the efficiency of irrigated agriculture.
This type of clean energy not only allows farmers to be more efficient, but also has a direct impact on the environmental footprint of their activity, obtaining more sustainable food, which is demanded by today’s society. As if this were not enough, renewable energies applied to irrigation help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
However, only with the installation of renewable energies in our irrigation system we will not achieve that extra efficiency and sustainability. It is necessary to carry out a correct design, construction and management of irrigation systems, opting for new technologies to optimize irrigation management and evolve towards the so-called “Smart Irrigation”.
Regarding renewable energies associated with irrigation, it is necessary to know that the energy they supply is mainly used to power the pumping groups, the part of the installation that demands the most energy. Within the wide range of renewable energies currently in use, the following have plans for the future in irrigation: solar photovoltaic energy, mini-hydraulic energy and wind energy.
A key aspect for betting on renewable energies in the countryside is that they depend on elements that can be found in the rural environment itself: air, sun, water currents. In addition, access to the electricity grid from farms can often be less than optimal.
On the other hand, renewable energies are becoming more popular because installation costs are increasingly lower, and they are beginning to be just as competitive as conventional energies. In addition, they provide a distributed system that does not depend on the central power grid, which offers advantages such as not stopping activity in the case of a central system failure, or dealing with connection works to the central power grid, when it may be miles away.
- Tasos on December 8, 2021 @ 19:11:42
This post was created by Concha Avila on September 19, 2021.
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