German solar developer Next2Sun will inaugurate an agrivoltaic project next week in Donaueschingen-Aasen, in the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg.
The 4.1 MW solar project spans around 14 hectares. It was built with roughly 11,000 n-type PERT bifacial solar modules, with 380 W of power, provided by Chinese manufacturer Jolywood. They were vertically installed on 5,800 racks over the past few months.
“Due to the performance advantages and, in particular, the higher rear side efficiency, we expect the use of heterojunction modules in future projects, such as those offered by Meyer Burger,” Next2Sun managing director Sascha Krause-Tünker told pv magazine.
The participation of Meyer Burger CEO Gunter Erfurt in the upcoming opening ceremony is one indication that this might happen. Radovan Kopecek of ISC Konstanz and Baden-Württemberg Minister-President Winfried Kretschmanns will also attend the ceremony.
Meyer Burger is currently building a heterojunction cell production facility in Bitterfeld and a module production facility in the former Solarworld plant in Freiberg. The first modules should roll off the production line in the middle of next year.
Next2Sun said the expected annual yield from the plant is around 4,850 MWh per year. Electricity will be fed into the grid and remunerated at an average price of just under €0.06/kWh. The project was built under the German tender scheme for solar projects over 750 kW in size, Krause-Tünker said.
The company also has other agrivoltaic projects in its pipeline. It is currently planning new systems with its partners under Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz subsidies and as large high-voltage projects with power purchase agreements, Krause-Tünker said. The next EEG project is expected to go online in the third quarter of 2021.
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Hey, this is great news, but the article is missing one important piece of information: what sort of agriculture is being combined with the solar panels? People are very interested in knowing which crops work and which do not. Thanks!