Brazil's agricultural sector starts harvesting the power of the sun

Record harvests have made the agricultural sector a key engine of Brazil’s economy, in turn, highlighting the need for stable and decentralized power supply, which favors the solar energy sector.

Demand from rural producers looking to implement solar projects has been rising, making agriculture the third-largest sector in terms of demand for small-scale photovoltaic systems.

Rodrigo Sauaia, president of solar energy association Absolar, tells BNamericas all about this trend.

BNamericas: What is the current share of solar energy in Brazil’s agricultural sector?

Sauaia: Currently, Brazil has more than 5.5GW of installed photovoltaic solar power among rural producers. More than 318,000 producers are generating their own clean, renewable and competitive energy on their properties.

These photovoltaic systems represent 8.6% of all small-scale systems operating in Brazil, which total 3.7mn and account for 13.4% of the country’s installed capacity for self-generation of solar energy. 

BNamericas: What is the agricultural sector’s relevance in terms of investments and size for the solar power industry?

Sauaia: Altogether, these projects amount to over 25bn reais [US$4.6bn] in investments made by rural producers for solar power generation in Brazil, which represents a significant share of the market and the sector today.

Rural producers are the third-largest users of photovoltaic solar energy in Brazil, behind only residential users in first place and small retailers and services companies in second.

This presents a strong level of participation, and the rural sector has shown increasing interest in using the technology.

BNamericas: What explains this growing interest?

Sauaia: A few factors help explain this.

First, the versatility of photovoltaic solar energy. It’s a technology that can be used for water pumping, irrigation, fish farming, cooling products and production processes in field activities, as well as for lighting, dryers, desalination, electric fences, surveillance systems and telecommunications.

It’s important to highlight that these systems can also be installed in unproductive or low-productivity areas of a property, including rooftops, facades, building covers, silos and degraded land, helping to optimize the use of space on the rural producer’s property.

Photovoltaic solar energy can also bring electricity to rural areas that are far from the grid or that have insufficient, unstable, or poor-quality electricity supply. 

With the support of battery systems, it’s possible to maintain electricity in these regions 24 hours a day, eliminating the need for diesel generators, which are more expensive, more polluting, and have higher operation and maintenance costs.

BNamericas: Are there other applications for solar energy from the perspective of the agricultural sector? 

Sauaia: There is increasing interest in using solar technology among rural producers, and there are many different areas, types of crops and uses being explored by these producers. 

Beyond the applications I’ve already mentioned, it’s very common to use photovoltaic systems for irrigation, which requires a lot of electricity, and in activities related to milk production, animal protein production and livestock in general, such as pig farming, poultry farming and fish farming. It’s also being used in grain production, where there are opportunities to cut costs in irrigation, drying and processing.

More recently, a global trend known as agrivoltaics has been gaining traction. 

This involves combining photovoltaic systems with other productive agribusiness activities in the same area. For example, in a pasture area used for raising cattle or sheep, a photovoltaic canopy can be installed to generate electricity.

There are projects in Brazil testing photovoltaic solar energy in combination with crops such as sugarcane. In other countries, the technology is widely used alongside the production of vegetables.

This combined use allows the same area to serve two purposes: agricultural production and electricity generation, which increases efficiency and creates dual value from a single plot of land.

These are some of the interesting applications of photovoltaic solar energy.

BNamericas: How does Absolar plan to further promote the use of solar energy in the agricultural sector?

Sauaia: Absolar has been working to promote the growing inclusion of this technology in financing programs aimed at rural producers, such as credit lines under [federal harvest plan] Plano Safra, enabling the combination of sustainable technologies with efficiency gains and cost reductions.

In this context, we’re also seeing growing interest among rural producers in combining energy storage systems with photovoltaic solar energy,  in other words, generating solar power and storing it in batteries so it can be used at any time of day or night, as needed by the producer. This helps ensure more secure and robust energy supply for their activities.