OKWIND

Louis Maurice, President of OKwind Group, is appointed Director of France Agrivoltaïsme and President of the Agrivoltaic Technologies Commission

Since its creation, the OKwind group has been committed to working alongside farmers to develop a more resilient agriculture that is less dependent on climate change. This is a decisive decade, as farmers have to fight against the increasing climatic hazards, while at the same time responding to the development of new uses of electricity and the need to green the energy mix. The appointment of Louis Maurice, President of the OKwind group, as a director of France Agrivoltaïsme marks a further step in the group’s commitment to the agricultural world.

Agrivoltaics: a new lever of wealth for the rural world
Agrivoltaics is emerging as a new positive revolution for the agricultural world. Driven by a need and a strong political will, this approach brings a new development lever for farmers and for the rural world in general. According to the recent definition of the Ademe, this practice in full development aims to install “photovoltaic modules on the same plot of land as agricultural production and influence it by directly providing one of its services:

  • Service of adaptation to climate change
  • Service of access to a protection against the hazards
  • Service to improve animal welfare
  • Specific agronomic service for the needs of crops (limitation of abiotic stresses etc.)
    And this, without inducing, neither important degradation of the agricultural production, nor reduction of the incomes resulting from the agricultural production.

OKwind, a historical actor of agrivoltaics
Positive agrivoltaics developed by OKwind is for the benefit of farmers and meets three main objectives

  • to respect the primary purpose of an agricultural plot, namely its purpose of food production,
  • not to artificialize the soil,
  • to allow the reversibility of the land and the development of different types of crops in the short and medium term.
    OKwind has been developing unique technologies adapted to agrivoltaics since 2009. Its intelligent solar trackers allow the development of agriculture under the surface thanks to their very small footprint and the height of the panels which allows the passage of agricultural machinery. This makes OKwind a unique player in this rapidly expanding field.
    “Agrivoltaics in France requires a balanced and open dialogue between all the players in the sector in the service of agriculture, which is why I am very pleased with this appointment to the Board of Directors of France Agrivoltaïsme, whose main mission it is,” says Louis Maurice, Founder and President of OKwind.
    He adds: “In the face of climate change, it is a real transformation of agriculture that must take place, with real risks for individual farmers. In the long term, agrivoltaics should make it possible to: preserve the agricultural value chain, improve farmers’ yields, reduce evaporation, water, light and heat stress and finally reconcile food sovereignty with the ecological transition. At OKwind, we have been working for years alongside farmers in this direction. This appointment will allow us to share our positions with the entire industry, in the interest of the farmer.”