Tag Archive for: Potato

Agrivoltaic systems have an increasing interest. Realizing this upcoming technology raises still many challenges at design, policy and economic level. This study addresses a geospatial methodology to quantify the important design and policy questions across Europe. An elevated agrivoltaic system on arable land is evaluated: three crop light requirements (shade-loving, shade-tolerant and shade-intolerant) are simulated at a spatial resolution of 25 km across the European Union (EU). As a result, this study gives insight into the needed optimal ground coverage ratio (GCR) of the agrivoltaic system for a specific place. Additionally, estimations of the energy production, levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and land equivalent ratio (LER) are performed in comparison with a separated system. The results of the study show that the location-dependent solar insolation and crop shade tolerance have a major influence on the financial competitiveness and usefulness of these systems, where a proper European policy system and implementation strategy is required. Finally, a technical study shows an increase in PV power of 1290 GWp (almost × 10 of the current EU’s PV capacity) if potato cultivation alone (1% of the total arable agricultural area) is converted into agrivoltaic systems.