01 · POSITION
Position
UNITY should be sold as the field’s single signed data mesh, not as a sensor. One chip design sits inside every node: soil probe, climate station, valve controller and panel junction box. Each node signs its own readings, relays its neighbours’ traffic over Wirepas Mesh, and acts as a fixed ranging anchor for robots and drones. Confidence: high on the measurement and finance case, medium on positioning, which depends on silicon still to be qualified.
The value is not the readings. Semios, Hortau and greenhouse climate computers already sell readings. The value is three things no incumbent combines: one radio fabric for every device in the field, attestations a lender or utility can rely on, and a positioning grid that works under panels where GNSS degrades. AgriPV and greenhouse PV need all three, because the asset is financed on energy and justified on crop.
02 · PROBLEM
Problem
An agrivoltaic site today runs four or five separate data systems and none of them is trusted by the people who finance it. The inverter vendor reports energy. A soil-probe vendor reports moisture through its own gateway and cloud. The irrigation controller has a third app, the weather station a fourth. Every sensor in the popular “30 days of smart agriculture sensors” series ends the same way: sensor, gateway, vendor IoT platform, farmer insight. Each one is a silo.
That fragmentation causes three concrete failures:
- Cost. Every vendor brings its own radio, gateway, SIM and subscription. Under steel racking and trellis wire, each needs its own coverage survey.
- No shared evidence. Michael Barnard’s TFIE Evidence Book4 asks for separated, multi-year, measured numbers on crop value per hectare, measured water outcome, electricity per hectare and the agrivoltaic premium over ordinary PV. Vendor silos cannot join those into one time series, and nobody downstream can check them.
- Self-reported telemetry. Voltiris is building its own VoltiCrop IoT and energy platform, per its CEAIF 2026 talk. At Eschbach Gemusebau the utility, Elektra Baselland, finances and owns the system. A utility underwriting an asset cannot rely on the module supplier’s own telemetry about its own modules. The agronomic half of the Voltiris return, about USD 20k per hectare a year, is the part no meter reads.
The gap is a neutral, signed, multi-sensor fabric owned by neither the module vendor nor the grower.
03 · ARCHITECTURE
Architecture
One node design, one mesh, one ledger. The sensor element changes per node; the radio, the signing core and the firmware do not.
Readings are signed on the node, hop across Wirepas Mesh to a gateway, and land in the Trust Engine. Robots and drones read position fixes directly off the fixed node grid.
Silicon. Wirepas runs only on Nordic, Silicon Labs and TI parts, and none of them holds a Common Criteria certificate. The near-term node is therefore the two-chip build already proven in UNITY v1: a Wirepas SoC (Silicon Labs EFR32MG24B class) for radio and mesh, plus an NXP SE05x secure element as the signing anchor at EAL6+. The fabless UNITY core is the route to one die.
Why no IP at the node. A Layer 2 mesh node exposes no network services. That is a documentable answer to CRA Annex I Part I point 2(j), which requires reduced attack surfaces, and to NIS2 supplier questionnaires. It also keeps node power low enough for a battery soil probe.
04 · SENSOR STACK
Sensor stack
Six node types cover Barnard’s denominators4 and closed-loop irrigation and fertigation. Each carries the same UNITY core; only the sensor head changes.
| Node | Measures | Feeds | Design note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Root-zone probe | Volumetric water content, soil EC, soil temperature | Irrigation scheduling, regulated deficit irrigation | One combined capacitance probe (METER TEROS 12 class), 1 to 3 depths per irrigation block |
| Climate node | Air temperature, RH (so VPD), PAR, leaf temperature | Heat, frost and disease risk; measured shade effect | Paired: one under panels, one in an unshaded reference row |
| Fertigation node | Solution pH and EC, dosing flow | Fertiliser dosing control | pH is read in the solution, not the soil. In-soil pH reads up to 1.5 units off in dry soil and needs daily calibration (Vogel et al., SOIL 2024) |
| Valve and pump node | Valve state, flow, line pressure | Closed-loop irrigation; metered water outcome | Water is measured, never inferred, as the Evidence Book demands |
| Panel junction box | Module V, I, temperature every ~30 s | Electricity per hectare; premium over ground-mount PV | Existing UNITY product |
| Mobile tag | Range to fixed nodes | Robot and drone position | See the next section |
The industry has already published this design, wired. The EU REGACE pilot greenhouse at Fattoria Solidale del Circeo, Italy (Bovesecchi et al., Journal of Building Engineering, July 2026), runs the same split: 64 bifacial 75 Wp modules on internal single-axis trackers, PV-shaded sectors against unshaded reference sectors, and three sensor domains (PV performance, microclimate, irrigation). It does this over three separate Modbus RS-485 buses at 5-minute sampling, with daily CSV backup to a cloud folder. That is the right measurement design on a 180 m2 greenhouse. Cable runs, unsigned CSVs and no identity per reading are what stop it scaling to a 14 ha vineyard. UNITY is the same design with the wire replaced by mesh and the CSV replaced by signed records.
Precision fertiliser as a service: DOTS (Israel). DOTS, Data of The Soil (Rafi Levi, founder and CEO) sells continuous root-zone nitrate monitoring as a service. It reads nitrate in soil pore water by electro-optical spectral analysis, from seven years of Ben-Gurion University research. DOTS reports over 92% correlation with lab analysis and 30% fertiliser savings with no yield loss in tomato greenhouse trials (Farm Equipment, 24 May 2023). Its backers include OurCrowd, Labs/02, Reliance Industries and the Israel Innovation Authority. In emails to LGV, DOTS reported over 25% savings in two commercial POCs (20 Dec 2022) and was raising a USD 5M to 7M seed round to install its first 100 units (9 May 2023). An MNDA was exchanged in September 2022. A DOTS nitrate head on a UNITY node fills the gap in-soil pH cannot: a nutrient reading that drives fertigation, signed at source. Treat all savings figures as vendor claims until DOTS’s current status is checked.
05 · POSITIONING
Hyper-location and wayfinding
The fixed node grid can double as a ranging anchor grid, and overhead PV is where that matters most. Fraunhofer ISE measured GNSS under the overhead orchard array at Kressbronn: signal strength fell 3.7 dB-Hz and horizontal error rose from 3.8 m to 5.3 m. The authors recommend RTK or SLAM (pv magazine, 29 Nov 2024). A solar-site mower holding plus or minus 5 cm with RTK in open sky lost position under panels and fell back to odometry (Xsens case study).
| Method | Accuracy | Status Oct 2026 | Role in UNITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wirepas RSSI positioning | 3 to 10 m (VDMA sheet) | Positioning Engine end of support, not in NMS (Wirepas docs) | Zone-level asset and bin tracking only |
| Bluetooth 6.0 Channel Sounding (phase ranging plus round-trip time) | Vendor “sub-metre”; lab dev kits show 10 to 80 cm scatter (Nordic DevZone) | Shipping on Silicon Labs xG24 (QFN, 40 MHz crystal only) and Nordic nRF54L15 (Silicon Labs docs) | Default anchor grid. Any robot or drone radio that implements Channel Sounding can range without a proprietary receiver |
| UWB two-way ranging (802.15.4z, FiRa) | Under 10 cm, vendor figure (Qorvo DW3000) | Mature, needs a companion chip per node | Option for centimetre guidance at row ends and docking points |
| RTK-GNSS | Plus or minus 5 cm in open sky | Degrades under overhead PV and glass | Remains primary outside the array |
Design call. The xG24 is both a Wirepas platform and the Silicon Labs Channel Sounding reference chip, so one-chip Wirepas plus ranging is plausible. Wirepas, or its reseller Siemens, has published no support for sharing radio time with Channel Sounding, so it is a vendor conversation, not an off-the-shelf feature. The low-risk build puts a second ranging radio on panel-powered junction-box nodes only. They have the energy budget and sit on a surveyed grid. Battery soil probes stay pure sensors.
Time-domain services. Two-way ranging needs no shared clock, which suits sleepy battery anchors. TDoA would need nanosecond anchor sync that a low-energy mesh cannot give. Millisecond timestamps for signed records are a separate and much easier service, and the mesh can provide them.
Who uses it. Vineyard autonomy is moving off GNSS-only guidance. Naio stopped selling and supporting its RTK-guided Jo and Orio robots on 15 June 2026 (Naio). FarmX sells a vision-based GPS-free orchard tractor kit. A standards-based anchor grid is the one positioning layer any robot or drone vendor that adopts Channel Sounding can use without a proprietary receiver.
06 · MARKET
Market and business model
The buyer is whoever carries the asset risk: the lender, the utility, the regulator that set a condition, or the cooperative. It is rarely the grower. Voltiris’ live utility-owned site (Elektra Baselland at Eschbach) and the ALC’s Phase 2 condition at Double Barrel both put the measurement need on a party other than the farmer.
Revenue lines
| Line | Unit | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Node hardware | Per node, at cost recovery | Panel chip trajectory USD 80 to 20 to 10 to 4; soil sensor target USD 30 (15 July 2026 Hunter West call) |
| Platform fee | Per node per year | USD 2.25 per chip per year, existing UNITY model |
| Evidence packs | Per site per season | Signed crop, water and energy record against a reference zone. Sold as a matched-pair quasi-experiment with covariate adjustment, never as an RCT |
| Granular certificates | Per MWh | Hourly or sub-hourly EnergyTag-style T-EACs. BC mandatory RECs at USD 18/MWh against USD 3 to 5 voluntary, as stated on the 15 July call |
| Positioning service | Per robot or drone per year | Anchor grid access on panel-powered nodes |
| Retrofit pilot | Fixed price, one season | Hardware, install, engineer days, analysis, one deliverable |
Market size. Precision irrigation is USD 4.18B in 2024, rising to USD 6.29B by 2029 (MarketsandMarkets). Global Industry Analysts puts it at USD 4.1B only by 2030, so the boundary is soft and mostly hardware. Voltiris expects high-tech greenhouse area to grow from 60,000 to 100,000 ha by 2030 (Vertical Farm Daily). No analyst sizes the sensing and attestation layer on its own. That gap is unpriced, not empty.
Incumbents sell readings, not evidence.
| Player | What they sell | What they lack for AgriPV |
|---|---|---|
| Semios (Vancouver) | Pest, frost and water SaaS for orchards and vineyards; CAD 225M raised | No energy data, no signed records |
| CropX (bought Tule, 2023) | Soil and canopy water sensing plus platform | No energy data |
| Hortau | Soil tension stations plus agronomy service | No energy data |
| Phytech | Plant dendrometer sensing | No energy data |
| Greenhouse climate computers (Priva, Hoogendoorn) | Climate, dosing, supply and drain EC/pH | No module-level energy data, and they are the grower’s own system |
| Voltiris VoltiCrop IoT | Module temperature and climate impact into greenhouse software | Vendor-owned telemetry about its own modules |
The pattern across incumbents is hardware near cost plus subscription plus agronomy. UNITY competes on the data layer and should partner with probe makers (METER, Sentek, Campbell) rather than fight them on probe price.
07 · STEELMAN
Steelman
The strongest case: regulators and financiers now write measurement conditions into AgriPV approvals, and published results disagree so widely that only independent, signed, site-level evidence can settle them. A single mesh that also carries energy and positioning is the cheapest way to produce that evidence.
- Measurement is now a permit condition, not a nice-to-have. BC’s Agricultural Land Commission approved Double Barrel Phase 1 on condition that a grape quantity and quality report is filed before Phase 2 can proceed1. DIN SPEC 91434 makes documentation and operational monitoring of the agricultural main use part of the standard2. SolarPower Europe’s 18-country policy map finds France requires Agri-PV to keep at least 90% of agricultural yield and Germany 66%. France makes projects using non-proven technologies monitor yields against an adjacent control zone, and Italy’s “advanced agrivoltaic” status requires a monitoring system3. Barnard’s Evidence Book turns the same demand into five denominators4. Each one is a recurring, site-specific measurement obligation.
- The published numbers disagree, and that spread is the market. Voltiris reports +9% class-I peppers in the Delphy trial, but +1.5% at Meier Gemuse, its only hectare-scale commercial site5. Its strawberry turnover figure is +4% on its own site and +9% in its white paper6. Puglia vines under panels gave 277% more grapes in one season, while cool-climate Veneto trials showed yield and quality falls7. Sun’Agri reports 20 to 60% yield gains in the Southern Rhone8. A lender cannot price a range that wide. Signed, site-level, reference-zone data narrows it.
- One fabric costs less than five silos. Wirepas routes about 100 m per hop, takes up to 14 nodes per router, reaches 2,745 nodes in three hops, and runs non-router nodes at 12 to 15 microamps9. It already carries 702,046 meters across Himalayan valleys where cellular is thin, and over 12 million in India10. On an AgriPV site, the panel junction boxes provide a dense, powered router backbone at no extra infrastructure cost, provided each junction-box node carries a battery or supercap sized for overnight low-energy routing, because frost is a night event. The REGACE pilot needed three separate Modbus buses to cover the same three domains on 180 m211.
- Trust is built in, not bolted on. Every reading is signed under a hardware identity at the node. The node has no IP address, which is a documentable answer to CRA Annex I Part I point 2(j) on reduced attack surface12. Incumbent sensor platforms produce readings. UNITY produces attestations a third party can verify. The Double Barrel team’s own assessment names data interoperability as its primary technical risk, because no integrated precision agriculture data system exists23.
- The grid solves positioning exactly where GNSS fails. Fraunhofer ISE measured a 3.7 dB-Hz signal loss and 39% worse horizontal error under an overhead orchard array13. RTK-guided vineyard robots are leaving the market14. Bluetooth 6.0 Channel Sounding is a published standard that any robot or drone radio implementing it can range against, with shipping silicon from Silicon Labs (xG24) and Nordic (nRF54L15)15.
- The asset is financed on energy and justified on crop, and only one data system sees both. Voltiris prices about USD 20k per hectare a year of agronomic value next to USD 30k of energy, and no meter reads the first number16. Its utility-owned site puts that exposure on the utility17. BC Hydro’s Call for Power settles hourly with time-of-delivery factors of about 19% to 134%18, and new BC Hydro self-generators are paid 10 cents/kWh for surplus from 1 July 202619. Oliver is FortisBC territory, whose terms are not yet confirmed. Time-matched, signed energy data is worth more under both.
- Okanagan climate stress makes the need acute. The January 2024 freeze cut Okanagan insured wine-grape output from about 14,184 tons in 2023 to about 808 tons in 202420. The valley was at Drought Level 3 of 5 in September 202521. Dynamic Agri-PV over vines has cut water demand by 12% to 34% in European trials22. A winery that has lost two crops needs measured proof that the panels protect the vines.
Notes
- Penticton Herald, ALC approval of Double Barrel agrivoltaics: pentictonherald.ca; Penticton Western News, 24 Jan 2026: pentictonwesternnews.com ↩
- pv magazine, 27 Apr 2021, DIN SPEC 91434: pv-magazine.com ↩
- SolarPower Europe, Agrisolar Policy Map, 21 Oct 2025, technical requirements section (Dropbox: Sunified/SolarPower Europe/Agrisolar_Policy_Map_Final.pdf) ↩
- Michael Barnard, TFIE Agrivoltaics Evidence Book v1.0, 24 Jun 2026, the decision workbook (pathway scorecard and evidence notes) published with his TFIE Strategy Briefing “Agrivoltaics Works Where Shade Does Farm Work”: briefing.tfie.io/p/agrivoltaics-shade-farm-work ↩
- Vertical Farm Daily, Voltiris at CEAIF 2026: verticalfarmdaily.com; Meier Gemuse result from the voltiris.com project page (gBrain companies/meier-gemuse) ↩
- voltiris.com Proefcentrum Hoogstraten page against the Voltiris and Harvestis white paper (gBrain concepts/voltiris-harvestis-strawberry-trial-2025) ↩
- Economic Times, 20 Aug 2026, Puglia grapevines under solar: economictimes.com ↩
- Wine Spectator, 4 Feb 2025, Sun’Agri vineyard results: winespectator.com ↩
- Wirepas Mesh concepts, developer portal: developer.wirepas.com; VDMA technology sheet, Nov 2025: vdma.eu ↩
- IoT Business News, 20 Oct 2026: iotbusinessnews.com ↩
- Bovesecchi et al., Journal of Building Engineering 129 (2026) 116854: doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2026.116854 ↩
- gBrain concepts/unity-silicon-trilemma-radio-mesh-assurance, 17 Aug 2026, citing Comm. Impl. Reg. (EU) 2025/2392 and CRA Annex I ↩
- pv magazine, 29 Nov 2024, Fraunhofer ISE Kressbronn GNSS study: pv-magazine.com ↩
- Naio Technologies, Jo robot page: naio-technologies.com ↩
- Bluetooth SIG, Channel Sounding technical overview v1.0: bluetooth.com ↩
- Vertical Farm Daily, as note 5 ↩
- voltiris.com Eschbach Gemusebau project page (gBrain companies/eschbach-gemusebau) ↩
- BC Hydro 2025 Call for Power proponent information session, May and June 2025, as cited in the Sunified Executive Summary for Okanagan Hills Winery Group and ITEL (Dropbox: Sunified/Pitch - WIP) ↩
- BCUC decision, 24 Mar 2026: streetinsider.com; CleanTechnica, 7 Jul 2026: cleantechnica.com ↩
- BC Ministry of Agriculture, 2025 Grape Acreage and Production Report: gov.bc.ca ↩
- Global News, 15 Sep 2025: globalnews.ca ↩
- SolarPower Europe, Agri-PV: How solar enables the clean energy transition in rural areas, briefing paper, Sep 2020 (Dropbox: Sunified/AGRI-PV SolarPower_Europe.pdf) ↩
- Randy McGuire, Strategic Technology Assessment: Agrivoltaics and Biochar for BC Wine Country and Canadian Agriculture, risk assessment section, citing Delphi Group, BC Precision Agriculture Technologies for Nutrient Management: Google Doc; delphi.ca ↩
08 · RED TEAM
Red team
None of these risks kills the thesis. Three of them (radio range in canopy, single-chip ranging, who pays) must be closed in the first field season.
| Risk | Why it bites | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Range in canopy and under racking | Wirepas publishes about 100 m per hop at 2.4 GHz, with no outdoor split. No agriculture or PV deployment was found. Leaves and steel attenuate 2.4 GHz | Junction-box routers every few metres make hop length a non-issue inside the array. Site survey before install. Use NR+ links for long gaps to the pump house, subject to a Canadian spectrum check |
| Positioning stack | Wirepas Positioning Engine is end of support. Channel Sounding on the same chip as Wirepas is unpublished. Only lab accuracy data exist | Second ranging radio on powered nodes. Measure field accuracy at Double Barrel in season one |
| Assurance claims | No Wirepas-supported chip holds a Common Criteria certificate. EAL6+ language must match the silicon actually shipped | Two-chip build with NXP SE05x anchor. Use “designed for” wording until certified |
| In-soil pH | Reads up to 1.5 units off in dry soil; daily calibration | Measure pH in fertigation solution and drain water only |
| Who pays | Grape revenue is roughly CAD 25k/ha a year (2019 average CAD 2,573/ton at 4 t/acre). Double Barrel capex is about CAD 2.6M/ha. Sensing cannot be sold per grower on crop margin | Bill the evidence pack to the project, lender or utility. Sell to cooperatives and test centres, not single growers |
| Incumbent response | Semios or CropX could add an inverter feed | They would still lack signing at source, panel-level data and the anchor grid. Partner with probe makers rather than compete |
| Attestation is not agronomy | A signed reading proves origin, not that the probe was sited or calibrated well | Published siting protocol, paired reference zones, calibration records signed into the same ledger |
| Attribute double claiming | Under the BC Hydro specimen EPA, environmental attributes on delivered energy pass to the buyer | Sell analytics and time-matching without transferring attributes, or negotiate a carve-out |
| Wirepas licence cost | Per-unit licence tiers; no public price | Price it before quoting node cost to Double Barrel |
09 · DOUBLE BARREL
Use case: Double Barrel Vineyards, Oliver BC
The pitch is not “add sensors to a vineyard”. It is “produce the report that unlocks Phase 2”. In January 2026 the ALC approved agrivoltaics over 2.67 ha of vines at Double Barrel Vineyards, part of Jesse Gill’s Okanagan Hills Winery Group. Phase 2, a further 9.83 ha, may proceed only after Phase 1 is complete and a report on grape quantity and quality is filed (Penticton Herald). That is 79% of the planned 12.5 ha waiting on one evidence document. The press calls it the first commercial-scale vineyard agrivoltaic system in North America, at a reported CAD 33M.
The site. Adjustable panels on mobile racks close automatically into a table-top cover, and thermal curtains drop along the row sides for sub-freezing nights. Irrigation is integrated, and there are attachments for weeding, pruning and picking (Penticton Western News). Gill lost his crop to winter two years running. Partners named in the press are Agrivoltaics Canada (installer), SFU, Western University and Claude Mindorff. On the 15 July 2026 call, Mindorff and Guy Price (Hunter West) agreed to use the project as the UNITY proof of concept, with Mindorff to draft an MOU. The project’s own platform overview, forwarded by Scott Lancaster, names AgriScout drones, the Mule ground robot and AgriCore analytics.
What the Double Barrel platform already claims. Randy McGuire’s Strategic Technology Assessment for Okanagan Hills Winery Group describes four layers: AgriScout AI drones, the Mule autonomous ground robot, AgriCore analytics, and smart solar. Drawing on the project’s own overview document, it claims the Mule replaces a 70 HP utility tractor for non-heavy tasks, saves 650 labour hours per 10 acres a year, and cuts chemical inputs 20% to 30% through precision targeting. It recommends a 10-winery Okanagan pilot, scaling to 50 and then 200 wineries, and calls for performance benchmarking protocols for yield, quality and sustainability.
UNITY slots under that stack, not beside it. McGuire names data interoperability as the primary technical risk, because no integrated system yet exists for precision agriculture data management, and answers it with AgriCore’s API. AgriCore is the analytics layer. UNITY is the signed field layer beneath it: one mesh that carries every sensor reading, gives the Mule and AgriScout their position under the closed canopy, and turns the 650-hour and 20% to 30% claims into logged, attributable numbers. Those benchmarking protocols are the ALC evidence pack, written once and reused at every winery in the rollout.
What each party needs from the mesh
| Party | Question they must answer | What UNITY records |
|---|---|---|
| ALC | Did Phase 1 keep grape quantity and quality? | Signed yield per row, Brix, pH, titratable acidity at harvest, panel rows against open reference rows, with weather covariates |
| Okanagan Hills Winery Group | Do the panels and curtains save the crop in freeze, heat and smoke? | Canopy and bud-zone temperature, curtain and panel position logs, frost events, leaf temperature |
| Grower operations | How much water and fertiliser, when? | Root-zone moisture and EC, metered irrigation, fertigation dosing, optional DOTS nitrate |
| Lender and EPC | Is the plant generating and available? | Panel-level V, I, temperature every ~30 s; mover availability |
| Offtaker (FortisBC territory, PowerX, data centre) | When was each MWh produced? | Hourly and sub-hourly time-matched energy for EnergyTag-style certificates |
| Mule and AgriScout | Where am I under a closed canopy? | Ranging fixes from the junction-box anchor grid |
Why the closed canopy matters for positioning. When the panels close into a table-top cover and the curtains drop, the rows become a covered tunnel. That is the worst case for GNSS and the best case for a fixed anchor grid on the racking.
One line to confirm: the 15 July meeting notes place Double Barrel in Summerland at 2.5 MW, while the press and the Sunified 5-pager place it in rural Oliver.
10 · ECONOMICS
Winery economics and deployment plan
The economics at Double Barrel rest on energy and avoided crop loss, not grape revenue, so UNITY should be priced on what its evidence unlocks, not on node count.
| Figure | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Grape revenue | about CAD 25,000 per ha a year | 2019 BC average CAD 2,573/ton (BC Wine Trends) at 2025’s 4.0 t/acre (BC Gov 2025 report) |
| Project capex | about CAD 2.6M per ha | CAD 33M over 12.5 ha, if the figure covers both phases |
| Area gated by the ALC report | 9.83 ha, 79% of the project | Phase 2 condition |
| Capex gated, pro rata | about CAD 26M | 79% of CAD 33M |
| Federal Clean Technology ITC | 30% refundable (20% without labour conditions), halved in 2034 | IEA policy record |
| Freeze exposure | Okanagan insured output fell about 94%, 2023 to 2024 | BC Gov 2025 report |
At the existing USD 2.25 per chip per year, platform fees on a few thousand panel nodes are under USD 10k a year. That is small next to about CAD 26M of build that waits on one report. Price the evidence pack as a fixed fee per season, with the platform fee on top.
Funding and carbon stack, checked against McGuire’s assessment
| Instrument | McGuire says | Status checked Oct 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural Clean Technology Program, Adoption Stream | 50% cost share for precision agriculture and clean energy; CAD 165.7M | Intake closed; AAFC share is at most 40% (50% only for businesses majority-owned by under-represented groups); projects had to finish by 31 Mar 2026 (AAFC). Watch for a successor round |
| Federal Clean Technology ITC | Not covered | 30% refundable on the solar and storage capex, halved in 2034 (IEA) |
| Wine Sector Support Program | CAD 177M, 2024 to 2027 | Labelled federal in the summary and provincial in the body; confirm which (BCWGC) |
| On-Farm Climate Action Fund | Targets nitrogen management | Natural fit for DOTS nitrate sensing on the fertigation node |
| Enhanced Replant Program (IAF BC) | Climate-resilient variety replacement | Pair replanting with design-in of the mesh |
| Canada Greener Homes Grant | Up to CAD 5,000 for farm solar | Residential only, and closed to new applicants since February 2024 (NRCan). Drop it |
| Biochar credits, Climate Action Reserve US and Canada protocol | 2.5 t CO2 per ha a year at CAD 60/t, so CAD 150/ha | Small per hectare, but credits need verified application records. Signed application logs on the same ledger lower the verification cost |
Payback is a model output, not an input. Payback will be calculated, not quoted. It is set by configuration: panel density and tracking, curtain use, offtake route (FortisBC, PowerX, data centre), certificate value, the funding stack, and measured crop and input effects. Each configuration gets its own model run and simulation. The runs are workshopped with Okanagan Hills Winery Group, Hunter West and the EPC before any figure goes to a lender. Season-one UNITY data replaces the assumed crop, water and fertiliser effects in those runs with measured ones.
The report box is the product. Everything before it exists to make that report defensible to the ALC, and everything after it is the repeat sale.
Phase 1 instrumentation, proposed
- UNITY in every panel junction box: the router backbone, energy record and ranging anchors.
- Paired root-zone stations (moisture, EC, temperature at two or three depths) under panels and in open reference rows.
- Climate nodes at bud and fruit-zone height under the canopy and in reference rows, including leaf temperature.
- Valve, flow and fertigation nodes, with pH and EC read in solution. DOTS nitrate heads as an option.
- Curtain and panel position logged as control events, so frost and heat protection can be attributed.
- Harvest data tapped per row: weight, Brix, pH, titratable acidity.
Prerequisite: confirm that open reference rows of the same variety and age exist next to Phase 1. Without them the comparison falls back to prior seasons, which the 2024 freeze makes unusable.
11 · NEXT STEPS
Next steps
- Get the MOU draft from Claude Mindorff and confirm the Phase 1 build date and site (Oliver per press, Summerland per the July notes)
- Confirm open reference rows of the same variety and age next to Phase 1
- Ask Wirepas two questions: radio time for Channel Sounding on xG24, and the per-unit licence price
- Price the node: EFR32MG24B in QFN with 40 MHz crystal plus NXP SE05x, with and without a ranging companion
- Reopen DOTS (Rafi Levi): current status and a nitrate head on a UNITY fertigation node
- Offer SFU CERG (Omri Haiven) co-design of the ALC report protocol, so the evidence format is agreed before the season
- Take the same evidence pack to Voltiris through Kaz Vermeer, with Elektra Baselland as the buyer
Thirty minutes to see if it fits.
We are looking for agrivoltaic and greenhouse PV sites where one season of signed evidence unlocks the next phase, starting with Double Barrel Vineyards. If a build, an approval or a financing round is coming up in the next twelve months, that is the conversation worth having.
One 30-minute Zoom covers both the fit check and the technical walk-through: the node, the mesh, the reference-row protocol and where your build window sits.
Prefer to write first? LG@sunified.com · or book at Calendly.com/lgv
12 · REVISION HISTORY
Revision history
| Version | Date | Change |
|---|---|---|
| v1.1 | 20 Oct 2026 | Sunified livery. Fable review fixes (8). SolarPower Europe policy map and 2020 briefing. DOTS nitrate sensing. Randy McGuire assessment woven in, funding stack checked. Payback set as a model output for workshop runs |
| v1.0 | 20 Oct 2026 | First issue: architecture, sensor stack, positioning, market, steelman, red team, Double Barrel use case |
13 · SOURCES
Sources
Industry articles on AgriPV
- Michael Barnard, TFIE Strategy Briefing, Agrivoltaics Works Where Shade Does Farm Work, with the TFIE Agrivoltaics Evidence Book v1.0, 24 Jun 2026: briefing.tfie.io
- Bovesecchi et al., Integrated microclimate, irrigation and PV monitoring for a pilot agrivoltaic greenhouse (REGACE), Journal of Building Engineering, July 2026: doi.org
- pv magazine, Overhead agrivoltaics could disrupt GNSS used for precision agriculture (Fraunhofer ISE), 29 Nov 2024: pv-magazine.com
- pv magazine, German organizations outline new standards for agrivoltaics (DIN SPEC 91434), 27 Apr 2021: pv-magazine.com
- Wine Spectator, Solar panels in vineyards (Sun’Agri), 4 Feb 2025: winespectator.com
- Economic Times, Puglia grapevines beneath solar panels, 20 Aug 2026: economictimes.com
- WSU News, Low-hanging fruit: blending solar power into farms, 4 Nov 2025: research.wsu.edu
- Penticton Herald, Double Barrel agrivoltaics ALC approval: pentictonherald.ca
- Penticton Western News, Oliver winery’s solar project clears another hurdle, 24 Jan 2026: pentictonwesternnews.com
- AgFunderNews, Voltiris spectral filtering, 3 Dec 2024: agfundernews.com
- Vertical Farm Daily, Voltiris zero grower investment model, 29 May 2026: verticalfarmdaily.com
- Fraunhofer ISE, Agrivoltaics: ise.fraunhofer.de
- SFU CERG agrivoltaics programme: sfu.ca
- IVES Open Science, vineyard agrivoltaics papers: ives-openscience.eu
- Farm Equipment, DOTS real-time soil nitrate monitoring, 24 May 2023: farm-equipment.com
SolarPower Europe reports (Dropbox, Sunified/SolarPower Europe)
- Agrisolar Policy Map, 21 Oct 2025: Agri-PV definitions, permitting, support schemes and monitoring rules across 18 EU member states. France requires 90% yield retention and control-zone monitoring for non-proven technologies; Germany 66%; Italy 70% of land kept under cultivation and a monitoring system for “advanced agrivoltaic”
- Agri-PV: How solar enables the clean energy transition in rural areas, briefing paper, Sep 2020: dynamic Agri-PV over vines cut water demand 12% to 34%; calls for digitalised systems that track irradiation and regulate microclimate
- Agrisolar Handbook (2024), cited as a design benchmark in the Sunified Executive Summary for Okanagan Hills Winery Group
- Global Solar Market Outlook 2026 and EU Solar Market Outlook 2025 to 2030, for market sizing context
Okanagan Hills Winery Group research
- Randy McGuire, Strategic Technology Assessment: Agrivoltaics and Biochar for BC Wine Country and Canadian Agriculture: Google Doc
- AAFC, Agricultural Clean Technology Program, Adoption Stream: agriculture.canada.ca
- NRCan, Canada Greener Homes Grant status: natural-resources.canada.ca
- Climate Action Reserve, US and Canada Biochar Protocol v1.0: climateactionreserve.org
Mesh, ranging and market
- Wirepas Mesh concepts: developer.wirepas.com; VDMA Wirepas technology sheet, Nov 2025: vdma.eu; Wirepas silicon platforms: wirepas.com; IoT Business News, 20 Oct 2026: iotbusinessnews.com; EIB financing, Jun 2026: eib.org
- Bluetooth SIG Channel Sounding overview: bluetooth.com; Silicon Labs Channel Sounding getting started: docs.silabs.com; Qorvo DW3000: qorvo.com
- BC Ministry of Agriculture 2025 Grape Acreage and Production Report: gov.bc.ca; BCUC net metering decision: streetinsider.com
- MarketsandMarkets precision irrigation: prnewswire.co.uk; Vogel et al. in-soil pH: egusphere.copernicus.org
Internal: Sunified UNITY AgriPV Strongman Thesis (5 Jul 2026); Executive Summary for Okanagan Hills Winery Group and ITEL; 15 July 2026 Hunter West call notes; gBrain concepts/unity-silicon-trilemma-radio-mesh-assurance; Voltiris gBrain pages; DOTS email thread, Sep 2022 to May 2023.