Off-Grid Solar-Powered Soil Monitoring Worldwide

Overview

A large international agricultural company manages crop operations across more than 100 locations worldwide. Many of these sites are in remote areas with no access to electricity or fixed infrastructure. Sigrow engineered a custom solar-powered monitoring solution so they could track soil conditions from anywhere in the world.

The Challenge

With over 100 sites spread across multiple continents and climate zones, the company had no way to continuously monitor soil conditions in the field. Most locations lacked grid power, making conventional sensor systems impossible to deploy. Teams relied on manual field visits — or simply went without data.

Goals & Objectives

• Enable real-time soil monitoring at remote, off-grid locations worldwide
  
• Eliminate dependency on grid electricity and fixed infrastructure
  
• Centralize data from 100+ sites into a single platform
  
• Ensure reliable operation even in prolonged low-light conditions

The Sigrow Solution

Standard monitoring systems couldn’t solve this. So Sigrow engineered one that could.
Working directly with the customer, Sigrow developed a fully solar-powered central station — a custom adaptation of its remote monitoring platform built for zero-infrastructure deployment. Each site was equipped with a Soil Pro+ sensor connected to a solar-powered gateway, transmitting data over standard 2G/4G cellular networks.

What was measured:

• Soil moisture levels
• Soil EC (electrical conductivity)
• Soil temperature
• Air temperature
• Relative humidity
• PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation)

The solar-powered gateway was designed with enough battery capacity to operate over 30 days without any sunlight — handling winter conditions, heavy overcast, and shaded installations without downtime.

Data Insights & Analysis

For the first time, the company gained continuous, real-time visibility into soil conditions across their entire global portfolio. Data from every location became accessible from a single dashboard — revealing differences between regions, seasons, and site conditions that were previously invisible.

Actions Taken

Based on the insights:

• Irrigation and soil management decisions could be made remotely using live data
• Field visit schedules were reduced, focusing only on sites that needed attention
• Cross-site comparisons enabled better resource allocation across regions

These actions were continuously monitored and optimized using live data feedback.

Key Takeaways

• Off-grid soil monitoring is achievable with the right engineering approach
• Solar-powered sensor stations can operate 30+ days without sunlight
• Custom solutions unlock deployments that off-the-shelf products cannot serve
• Real-time remote soil monitoring scales globally with cellular connectivity