Saint-Joachim is located in the middle of the Brière marshes, north of the Loire estuary. In 1970, a cemetery was built on the eastern side of the island. The sad reality for those whose relatives are buried there is that the cemetery often floods in winter.

With drainage problems, the town’s leaders proposed to cover the area to prevent rain showers. However, the problem was that the town was dry in the summer, so water was needed to irrigate the plants.

Saint-Joachim is a pioneer in renewable energy. They have installed photovoltaic panels on their roofs since 2012. To solve the flooding problem and maintain water levels in the summer, a project to install rooftop solar panels on the cemetery was proposed in 2021. The town decided to make this electricity available to the residents.

A prototype solar roof was installed on a 180m2/5,000m2 plot of land in the cemetery so that people could visualize more clearly and see the effectiveness of the project.

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Sample image of solar roof. Photo: EN

A 1.3 megawatt (MW) solar dome will cover the Saint-Joachim cemetery and provide electricity to 4,000 residents.

Since this is a shared solar project, residents will have to pay 5 euros ($5.20) to participate. However, the cemetery's solar canopy will fairly share the electricity produced with all users.

Broquaire, a local resident, said he had never seen such a large-scale electricity sharing project in France. On average, a shared solar system has only about 10 participants. This may be the first project with more than 1,000 participants.

The average household in Saint-Joachim is two people, and 1,000 grid connections mean at least 2,000 people will benefit. But distributing solar power equally requires a new, algorithmic approach that has to be built from scratch.

Physically, it is impossible to separate the electricity. It will take the system 30 minutes to read the results from the consumer and the solar roof. At the end of the month, this encrypted data will allow the French grid operator Enedis to calculate the deductions for each participant. It is estimated that households will save an average of 150-250 euros on electricity bills per year.

The chairman of the energy association said that cemeteries are not the best places to produce solar power. The main purpose of the project is to solve the problem of flooding during the rainy season. Using cemeteries as a place to produce solar power is a unique idea. He said that this is a good idea that should be replicated.

The city government is fully funding the €3.35 million installation, using tax revenue collected last year.

Saint-Joachim's solar cemetery will start providing residents with clean, cheap electricity in the summer of 2025.

(According to PV, Yahoo)

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