The Project

Vineyard growing under the solar glass roof

Brite Greenhouse

 Area: 1.228,20 m2
 Crop: Vineyard
 Location: Thessaloniki, Greece
 Installed Power: 40kWp
 Type of Solar Glass: BSG-65 and BGS-32
 Number of Solar Glass: 484 and 240 respectively

Production Monitoring CO2 Footprint Study
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Related material: the project, press coverage and the collaborators behind the technology.

Where the electricity goes

Power generated on a greenhouse roof is usually consumed on site. Climate control, irrigation pumps, ventilation and supplementary lighting all draw during the same daylight hours when the glazing produces, so much of the output never touches the grid.

That self-consumption is what makes the economics work. Electricity used where it is generated is worth the retail price rather than the feed-in tariff, and it avoids both transmission losses and the connection queues that hold up ground-mounted projects.

From cell to building product

A working solar cell is only the beginning. To become glazing it has to be laminated between sheets of architectural glass, sealed at the edges, and made to survive decades of thermal cycling, humidity and hail while keeping its optical properties.

It also has to be installable by the people who build greenhouses today, using the profiles and methods they already use. A product that demands a new trade to install it will not spread, whatever its performance on paper.