Professor Kwang-soo Kim of Seoul National University participated as a speaker in the ‘12 Solar Power Market Insight (PVMI 2023)’ agricultural solar power market trend session held at EXCO (CEO Lee Sang-gil) in Daegu on the 2023th and said, “An Android app dedicated to agricultural solar power has been developed. “He said.
Professor Kwang-soo Kim presented his research results so far under the topic of ‘Use of a crop growth simulation system to support agricultural solar power plant cultivation management.’ Professor Kim said, “There is a need to alleviate the polarization of farm income and to expand the cultivation of carbon-neutral crops to respond to climate change,” adding, “Agricultural solar power can be used as an additional source of income.”
At the same time, Professor Kim introduced the background of the research, saying, “Because the lower part of agricultural solar power has different environmental conditions from open fields, technical support is needed to increase crop production.” It is said that the National Agricultural and Meteorological Center, Solar Farm, Suncheon National University, and Seoul National University participated in the empirical study on agricultural solar-powered lower crop production.
A research team at Seoul National University, including Professor Kwang-soo Kim, discovered that differences in productivity occur depending on crop cultivation management methods in the changed environment of the agricultural solar power plant. Accordingly, Seoul National University’s Crop Ecology Information Laboratory received support from the Agro-Food Technology Planning and Evaluation Institute’s agricultural energy self-sufficiency industrial model technology development project and reflected the microclimate conditions under the solar power facilities for farms that have installed or are planning to install agricultural solar power facilities. We developed an app that predicts crop productivity.
The main functions of the app developed by the Seoul National University research team, including Professor Kim, are △Support for setting the installation shading rate △Support for rice variety selection function △Support for detailed crop cultivation management settings △Automatic establishment of data from the Korea Meteorological Administration’s synoptic meteorological observatory △Forecast of changes in production volume according to cultivation management △Farm registration using maps and searches.
Professor Kwang-soo Kim said, “It is impossible to avoid a decline in crop productivity under agricultural solar power, but if you search for and respond to optimal cultivation conditions, you can minimize the decline in productivity.” He added, “You can explore optimal production conditions through the developed app.” “There is,” he claimed. Lastly, Professor Kim added that additional research is needed to improve the reliability of crop growth simulation.
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