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Concept
Agrivoltaics
Summary
Agrivoltaics, agrophotovoltaics, agrisolar, or dual-use solar is the simultaneous use of areas of land for both solar panels and agriculture.
Because solar panels and crops must share the sunlight, the design of agrivoltaic facilities may require trading off such objectives as optimizing crop yield, crop quality, and energy production.
In some cases crop yield increases due to the shade of the solar panels mitigating some of the stress on plants caused by high temperatures and UV damage.
The technique was originally conceived by Adolf Goetzberger and Armin Zastrow in 1981, Agrivoltaics can refer to different methods of combining crops with solar panels, from conventional solar panels placed on top of crops, to greenhouses made of semi-transparent PV panels.
Agrivoltaic practices and the relevant law vary from one country to another. In Europe and Asia, where the concept was first pioneered, the term agrivoltaics is applied to dedicated dual-use technology, generally a system of mounts or cables to raise the solar array some five metres above the ground in order to allow the land to be accessed by farm machinery, or a system where solar paneling is installed on the roofs of greenhouses.
By 2019, some authors had begun using the term agrivoltaics more broadly, so as to include any agricultural activity among existing conventional solar arrays. As an example, sheep can be grazed among conventional solar panels without any modification. Likewise, some conceive agrivoltaics so broadly as to include the mere installation of solar panels on the roofs of barns or livestock sheds.
There are three basic types of agrivoltaics that are being actively researched: solar arrays with space between for crops, stilted solar arrays above crops, and greenhouse solar arrays. All three systems have several variables used to maximize solar energy absorbed in both the panels and the crops. The main variable taken into account for agrivoltaic systems is the tilt angle of the solar panels.
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