Solar Energy Integration into Controlled-Environment Agriculture

Dear Colleagues,

Global climate change and increasing water, energy, and food security challenges have intensified the demand for sustainable agricultural production systems. Controlled-environment agriculture using greenhouses enables precise regulation of temperature, humidity, light, and air composition, allowing year-round crop production with significantly higher yields than open-field cultivation. However, energy consumption in commercial greenhouses can account for 15–40% of total production costs, largely due to heating and cooling requirements.

Solar energy offers a clean, renewable, and widely available alternative, particularly for greenhouses located in remote or off-grid regions. Integrating solar energy technologies into agricultural land and greenhouse environmental control systems for heating, cooling, lighting, and irrigation presents a promising approach for reducing energy and water consumption while enhancing the economic and environmental sustainability of greenhouse agriculture.

Contributions could include, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Greenhouse-integrated photovoltaic (PVG) and photovoltaic–thermal (PVT) systems play a crucial role in supplying electrical and thermal energy for greenhouse environmental control systems.
• The integration of different types of photovoltaic (PV) systems into agricultural land (Agri-voltaic) represents a promising approach for simultaneous food and energy production.
• Greenhouse-integrated solar thermal technologies, including flat-plate collectors (FPCs), evacuated tube collectors (ETCs), and solar concentrators, require further investigation, as greenhouse heating demands cannot be fully met by conventional solar collectors alone. Enhancing the thermal performance of these systems through increased collector surface area or absorptance.
• The integration of solar collectors with heat pumps of various typologies and thermal energy storage using various phase change materials (PCMs) are essential.
• Under moderate climatic conditions, solar thermal collectors can be considered promising alternatives capable of supplying a substantial portion of the heating demand in agricultural greenhouses.

Prof. Dr. Reda Hassanien Emam Hassanien
Guest Editor

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