Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the technical foundation of the growth promotion of Pea plants using short-time irradiation of blue light in addition to the natural daylight by See-through solar cells. Methods: See-through solar cells are amorphous silicon solar cells capable of passing light (light transparency of 10%) while generating electricity. They were used as the roof (Taiyo Kogyo Co.) of the greenhouse at Uchita-cho, Wakayama, Japan. The supplemental irradiation of blue light to the pea for a half hour before daylight was carried out to measure the growth of the pea plants.
Results: Plants grown with supplemental blue light had better growth than those grown with no supplemental blue light. On the 35th, significant differences were found out about the plant height and number of nodes on the main stem and supplemental blue light (p<0.05). Power consumption and operation time of blue light lamps were decided as 80 W(20Wx2pieces) and 30minutes. The output of solar cells is 0.216 kWh (36Wx6 sheets). The power generation is about 265Wh per one day for January. It was shown that the solar system can be turned on about 3 hours. Conclusion: The present results concluded to be accelerated the plant growth of pea by using the short-time irradiation of blue light before the morning twilight and shown that See-through solar panels could be applied for greenhouse. This study was partially supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in the form of grants-in-aid (# 17658017).