Smart agriculture is determined to play a major role in fostering water and energy conservation solutions. Innovation technologies should help with overcoming current technical, economic, and sustainable barriers.

The SOIL2POWER project -“SOIL microbial fuel cells TO (2) POWER precise irrigation systems” – focuses on developing a breakthrough power sourcing technology based in Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs). In this way, it can leverage the natural microbial metabolism processes using organic matter present in the soil to generate electrical energy.

The project consortium aims to:

• build a controlled electrogenic biofilm formation by immobilization techniques,
• increase overall biobattery performance,
• create a continuous, clean, safe, and maintenance-free energy supply solution.

By facing relevant challenges throughout the project (e. g. bacterial behaviour, startup time conditions or electrode architecture), an innovative biological battery of rapid start-up and stable high-power supply will be conducted to control irrigation valves without maintenance and replacement.

Planned activities:

1. Feasibility and validation of separate components have been already carried out through lab studies. They will serve as the starting point to perform a continuous improvement development during the first stages of the project.
2. Afterwards, a prototype will be tested in simulated environment by the end of the year 2024.
3. If the solution is validated, with all functions up and running, a complete deployment of marketing and investment strategies will be performed during the years 2024-2025. Together with operational environment validation to rate real performance based on real feedback from end-users.

SOIL2POWER will contribute and ease the transition to develop novel technological solutions by means of:

• boosting the innovation in clean energy solutions industry,
• strengthening human capital, biotechnological research innovations,
• enabling the adoption of sustainable energy solutions in agricultural industry, paving the way to sustainable precise irrigation systems for smart agriculture.

The project is funded by the European Commission from the Horizon Europe programme under the EIC Transition call. Arkyne Technologies SL is coordinating a consortium of 5 partners from Spain, Netherlands and Slovakia. PEDAL Consulting will help with the project implementation focusing mainly on Business Development Activities and further exploitation of project results.