Sujith Ravi
Temple University, PA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Solar farms and farms often compete for the same land and water. This competition can work against goals like slowing climate change, preventing deforestation and improving quality of life.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Engineering
Plant Science & Agriculture
- Topics
agrivoltaics
solar photovoltaics
solar PV
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Measure how solar photovoltaic panels interact with the soil and vegetation beneath them, using field experiments that grow selected crops alongside the panels.
- Quantify the environmental benefits and tradeoffs of sharing land between solar panels and farming, using life cycle assessment models that count impacts across a system's whole life.
- Evaluate the economic feasibility of shared solar-farm systems at different scales in the United States and Indonesia, including their potential to create income and improve rural livelihoods.
- Develop a modeling framework for solar-agriculture co-location that decision makers could use for land-efficient energy planning in land-constrained regions.
More about the research
In the United States, there are concerns that large solar photovoltaic (PV) installations, which turn sunlight into electricity, will take over farmland and natural areas. Yet solar panels and plants can sometimes share the same land in ways that benefit both. In remote regions without grid power, such as parts of Indonesia, small shared solar-farm systems might also improve rural livelihoods and reduce fossil fuel emissions.
Why it matters
This work could help energy planners and policymakers place solar power where it uses land efficiently, keeps farms producing and avoids clearing new land. Farmers could gain new income streams, and remote communities in places like Indonesia could gain electricity access through small solar-farm installations.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jonathan Winter
Dartmouth College, NH·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure how existing solar facilities on agricultural land change soil and habitat conditions, the water cycle and crop production, using new field data collection.
Amisha Shah
Purdue University, IN·Engineering
Measure baseline concentrations of critical metals in leachates from US municipal solid waste landfills, which are currently unknown.
Kathryn Hinkelman
University of Vermont, VT·Engineering
Translate honeybee trophallaxis, food sharing between bees, into mathematical models and bio-inspired control methods for peer-to-peer energy sharing among electric vehicles, heat pumps, water heaters and batteries.
The school
Temple University: 22 labs on PI Pages, $315M a year on research, 238 research doctorates a year.
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