Joined up working promotes success.
Swedish project for a fossil free and electrified vegetation maintenance in solar parks receives government funding.
The project has received 4 million SEK in funding from Vinnova (Sweden’s Innovation Agency).
Green innovation to remove fossil fuels and in the long run completely switch to the use of renewable energy, is in growing demand. Large solar parks have the potential to be fully fossil free, but they need to be managed by cutting the vegetation to avoid shading the panels, which results in production falls, and to avoid that woody vegetation damages the solar panels. Those mowers and machines are currently generally powered by diesel, but could now be replaced by new technology.
This project is the first of its kind within fossil free mobile work machines deployed in solar parks and will run August 2020 – December 2022. The project consists of knowledge building, implementation, execution, and evaluation, and is now in the first phase. The implementation of the autonomous mower in the solar park will happen in spring 2022. Researchers at SLU will collect data on site during the whole trial period to generate new knowledge about how it can create added value in the form of biodiversity.