Agrivoltaics

US expert in environmental and energy policy Alexis Pascaris spoke with pv magazine about opportunities and barriers associated with agrivoltaics. Agrivoltaics are a very practical and advantageous alternative to large-scale solar, specifically in places where there are land-use constraints or needs for rural economic development, she explains. Differences in costs related to ground-mounted solar can typically be attributed to the raised racking systems or additional fencing, but these upfront investments in specialized hardware are eventually recovered as agrivoltaic systems produce dual-revenue streams.

Italy’s Enel will launch an experimental agrivoltaics program at its 34 MW Cohuna Solar Farm in the Australian state of Victoria to help formulate a “best practices” template for utility-scale solar PV sites in other countries.

Sun’Agri, REM Tec, Kilowattsol and Altergie Développement et Râcines have announced the creation of France Agrivoltaisme, the world’s first association for the promotion of agrivoltaics.

A U.S. scientist has developed a computational framework that assesses how well a hypothetical agrivoltaic project would perform in achieving desired outcomes such as the volume of PV electricity produced, and energy-to-agriculture. The method considers the high-frequency decomposition of solar irradiance into multiple rays and analyzes how these rays are propagated forward in time, to assess multiple reflections and absorption for various system configurations. It also takes into account panel inclination, panel refractive indices, sizes, shapes, heights, and albedo.

A group of researchers in the U.S. analyzed recent developments in efforts at dual land use projects, combining solar energy with habitat for pollinators and other wildlife. Based on recent projects and studies, they offer a list of best practices for developing the habitats; and warn that without careful oversight the promising concept could amount to little more than greenwashing.

A webinar held to discuss the role of donor funding in the African energy sector was told the U.S. president has ambitious plans to ramp up donations to developing economies – provided he can get Congress on side.

Engie Green has joined forces with the associations France Nature Environnement and Apicluster to install beehives at several of its solar PV parks in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d´Azur region, in southern France.

The Spanish utility said agrivoltaic projects and solutions will be evaluated based on costs, technological maturity, crop diversity, and level of digitization among other things.

New research from the United States has shown the numerous advantages of combining lamb grazing with solar power production. The researchers found, in particular, that the overall return from grazing was the same in both solar pastures and open pasture fields with no PV panels.

Developed by Swedish scientists, the proposed algorithm is said to calculate a project’s ideal design by combining climatological data with figures on expected solar power generation, shading distribution, water for irrigation, and agricultural yield. Its creators spoke with pv magazine about the key parameters that the model seeks to determine, one of which is the optimal distance between the solar module rows depending on the kind of crop.