Today's KNOWLEDGE Share : Solar Trees Could Save Forests From Deforestation

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

Solar Trees Could Save Forests From Deforestation While Generating the Same Power as Solar Farms

Picture a forested hillside stripped bare, replaced by row after row of black solar panels. That’s the tradeoff many communities face: renewable power at the cost of ecosystems. But a growing body of research suggests it doesn’t have to be that way. The solution may look less like an industrial solar farm and more like a forest solar trees.

Researcher Dan-Bi Um at the Korea Maritime Institute compared conventional flat-panel arrays with solar trees structures designed to mimic real trees, with panels branching upward like leaves. Their results were startling. “Linear arrangements of these structures achieve superior power capacity compared to conventional fixed panels while preserving existing forest cover,” the team reports.

Why Trees Make Better Solar Farms

Unlike ground-mounted panels that demand clearcuts, #solartrees are built and installed vertically into the canopy. This design allows light to filter down to understory plants while still capturing energy above. In simulations using Google Earth satellite imagery, Dan-Bi Um found that solar trees preserved 99% of the forest, compared to just 2% left standing when flat-panel plants were installed. All without sacrificing power output.

Conventional #solarfarms need a lot of land. In #SouthKorea, that’s meant cutting forests to install large arrays of flat-panel plants, a process that “completely destroy the biodiversity of the #forestecosystem,” Um warns. Between 2016 and 2018, deforestation tied to solar farms in the country more than quadrupled.

Solar trees sidestep #deforestation. By placing them along hiking trails or forest boundaries at 20-meter intervals, the researchers showed that 63 trees outfitted with high-efficiency panels could match the one-megawatt capacity of a conventional plant all while leaving the forest intact.

The advantages, of course, go beyond forests. In cities, solar trees provide shade for pedestrians and cars while generating #cleanelectricity. Some models include charging ports for electric vehicles or benches equipped with wireless charging . Researchers also note their cooling effect in urban “heat island” zones, where rising summer temperatures threaten public health.

The Bigger Picture:

This research arrives at a critical moment. Nations have pledged at recent climate summits to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 while halting deforestation. The problem is that those goals often collide. In South Korea, deforestation tied to solar projects surged from 529 hectares in 2016 to 2,443 hectares in 2018. Similar conflicts play out worldwide, from the Amazon to Appalachia.

source : ZME Science