Smart Agricultural Practices Rely On Solar Power

Smart agriculture aids farmers in improving the quality and quantity of their goods for optimal efficacy.

FREMONT, CA: It's no secret that the agriculture industry is vital to human life in any given country. Agriculture is not just the world's leading food source—it also provides us with raw materials like textiles, wood, and oils, which are essential for innumerable applications. Because of its significance, finding ways to make the agriculture industry more efficient and sustainable is essential to ensuring its longevity. The best way to accomplish this target is to implement smart agriculture.

Smart agriculture means advanced farming management that utilizes innovative information and communication technologies—like the Internet of things (IoT), big data, and the cloud—to automate processes, analyze operations, and oversee conditions. As a result, smart agriculture aids farmers in improving the quality and quantity of their goods for optimal efficacy.

Smart agriculture gives many advantages, but we won't be able to appreciate its benefits for long if its processes aren't sustainable. Regrettably, the sustainability of the agriculture industry is at risk because of a reliance on finite resources like oil and gas to power key procedures. The renewable resource of solar power is performing a gradually prevalent role in the industry to address the issues threatening its longevity. Along with sustainability, solar power provides numerous additional benefits that have revolutionized the smart agriculture industry.

Applications Of Solar Energy In Smart Agriculture

Allows The Monitoring Of Remote Farms And Fields

Solar power's biggest advantage to the smart agriculture industry is monitoring remote farms and fields. Collecting data regarding various conditions, such as temperature or moisture, can help farmers properly care for their crops. Still, as their farms and fields are often located in remote areas, supplying energy to monitoring devices can prove exceedingly hard—running the cables essential to provide power is often too costly or otherwise impossible.

Solar power gives an advantageous solution to this prevalent issue due to its ability to give power to sensors and other monitoring appliances without requiring cables or electrical sources. Therefore, even in geographically challenging environments such as remote farms, farmers can still achieve the benefits of real-time monitoring.

Solar power allows farmers to collect temperature and moisture levels data when working with serial-to-Ethernet device servers. A line of serial-to-Ethernet devices is especially advantageous to this application. These devices are intended to transmit RS232, RS422, or RS485 data across long distances in an IP network and to withstand harsh environments like extreme heat, rain, or wind. Because of these capabilities, they're ideal for operation in remote farmlands.

Also, our collection of serial-to-Ethernet devices can handily connect serial-based equipment to an Ethernet network to enable many different capabilities and communicate concurrently with multiple devices. In essence, they're ideal solutions for precisely monitoring deviations in conditions within a field so that farmers can adapt strategies consequently to optimize crop yield and quality—thus completing the goals of smart agriculture effectively and sustainably.

If you must extend the range of your network further, Wireless access points provide the solution you require. Our wireless access points can stretch the range of your network across expansive spaces in adverse environmental conditions for honest performance in agricultural applications.

Easy Installation And Transportation To Enable Crop Rotation

Besides remote monitoring, solar-powered monitoring equipment is also extraordinarily easy to install, which is highly beneficial when crop rotation or other locational variations are required. Since solar-powered monitoring equipment doesn't need cabling, it can be installed fast and easily at any location. Moreover, it can easily be transported and moved following shifting needs. Thus, when farmers rotate their crops, they won't have to completely rewire the network, allowing monitoring equipment to be moved with minimal difficulty.

Power-over-Ethernet switches are invaluable in enhancing the ease of mobility of solar-powered devices. The line of industrial power-over-Ethernet switches clarifies communication infrastructure by streamlining wiring setups and decreasing the number of devices necessary in a network. In a sole twisted pair Ethernet cable, the advanced technology in our PoE switches endorses connections up to 100 meters and speeds to 10mbps, 100mbps, and 1,000mbps. Further offering benefits for smart agriculture applications, our PoE switches boast these capabilities while reliably delivering power and network connectivity in various adverse environments.

Solar-Powered Irrigation Systems

The function of solar power in smart agriculture is notably impactful when it comes to the important process of irrigating fields. Irrigation plays a crucial role in agriculture by improving yields and water conditions in the soil and preventing famine due to variable rainfall patterns, which disrupt crop growth. Essentially, irrigation is essential to food security. Therefore, energy is vital to facilitate proper irrigation in an agricultural application. Still, access to such energy can prove challenging in rural areas with no reliable access to an electricity grid or where diesel fuel is expensive.

Solar-powered irrigation systems are becoming more viable and useful to supply large- and small-scale farmers with the energy necessary to power their irrigation systems. Such systems offer reliable, affordable, flexible, and clean energy, reducing irrigation energy costs. In addition, in areas where access to energy is limited or nonexistent, solar-powered irrigation systems contribute to rural electrification to enhance farmers' access to water and ensure the vital irrigation process has the energy it needs to commence.