
A project claimed to be Germany’s largest agriPV plant has been commissioned in the north-east of the country.
The 76MWp Tützpatz Agri-PV solar park, located in the Mecklenburg Lake District, spans a 93ha site that will also host livestock and arable farming.
Try Premium for just $1
- Full premium access for the first month at only $1
- Converts to an annual rate after 30 days unless cancelled
- Cancel anytime during the trial period
Premium Benefits
- Expert industry analysis and interviews
- Digital access to PV Tech Power journal
- Exclusive event discounts
Or get the full Premium subscription right away
Or continue reading this article for free
Developer Vattenfall completed the project without subsidy. A subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, Power and Air Condition Solution Management, will acquire all the electricity generated by the plant under a 10-year power purchase agreement.
The project consists of three sub-areas. The largest, Tützpatz 1, houses 43.3MW of bifacial modules mounted on fixed-tilt racking systems. Alongside the array, chickens will be kept in mobile coops on designated areas. Six mobile chicken coops, each with up to 2,500 birds, are planned.
The arrays in Tützpatz 2 and 3, 13.3MW and 19.4MW respectively, combine bifacial modules with single-axis tracker systems. They have been designated for future arable farming, with the tracker rows spaced further apart to allow farm machinery to access and work the fields.
Combining agriculture with PV generation counters one of the main criticisms of utility-scale solar, namely that it takes productive farmland out of use.
Claus Wattendrup, head of solar and batteries at Vattenfall, said: “Tützpatz is the first agriPV project of this size that we are implementing. With Tützpatz, we are demonstrating that agriculture and fossil-free power generation are not in competition with each other, but can complement each other perfectly.”
Heiko Geue, minister of finance and digitalisation for the State of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the project is located, added: “The agri-PV park in Tützpatz will be the largest facility of its kind in Germany. It demonstrates how agriculture, the energy industry, and climate protection can be intelligently combined.”