Spanish olive oil maker starts building solar plant over grove

Between the rows of olive trees in Vilches, a province of Jaén in southern Spain, the ground will soon be shaded by something other than leaves. Acesur, an olive oil producer based in Seville, has started building a 3.65 MW solar plant on a working grove beside its packaging plant. The trees stay where they are. The panels go above them.

The idea of putting solar panels over farmland, known as agrivoltaics, is not new, but it usually means lifting panels so that crops can grow in the shade. Here the company's approach is to keep the grove as it is. The steel structures stand more than 4 metres above the ground, high enough for agricultural machinery to pass underneath, including for the olive harvest. The project is being developed by Greening, a renewable energy company based in Granada. According to the company, the system is built on more than 5,150 solar modules anchored in concrete foundations.

The path to this stage was gradual. The technology was first tested in simulations of local climate, then in laboratory and greenhouse conditions, and finally in a prototype installed in a traditional rain-fed grove. A company representative said that results from two consecutive harvests showed that power generation and olive cultivation can coexist, and that the installation lowered soil temperatures, kept moisture in the ground and improved yields. These figures come from the company and have not been independently verified. The company also calls the Vilches project the world's first industrial-scale "olivovoltaic" installation, a claim it makes for itself.

For Acesur, the gain is direct. All the electricity the plant produces will go to its packaging facility, and the project includes a 3 MWh battery system to store energy and make its use more flexible. Spain's Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE) has awarded the project a €2.8 million grant to support the integration of renewable energy into industrial operations. The sources give no date for when the plant will start operating, nor any figure for its expected output or savings, so what the project will yield in practice is still to be measured. If the harvests keep coming in as the company describes, the same layout could interest other growers who want to produce power without giving up a single tree.