COMBINING PV AND FOOD CROPS TO AGROPHOTOVOLTAIC – OPTIMIZATION OF ORIENTATION AND HARVEST

摘要

Presently ground mounted PV plants and food production are perceived to conflict with each other.This conflict can be resolved by the concept of Agrophotovoltaics (APV), the combination of PV and agriculture atthe same plot. This concept has received little attention although it was proposed long ago. We started byinvestigating plant growth under existing PV installations and found that many species of natural plants grow quitewell under these conditions. From those studies conclusions can be drawn which crops can be cultivated togetherwith PV. Three categories could be identified: Crops that benefit from some shading, crops that are not muchinfluenced and crops that depend on maximum irradiation and are not suitable for APV. We also developed asimulation program that calculates global radiation at ground level inside rows of modules. A major result was thatthe conventional installation towards south leads to persistent shade and uneven ripening of crops. A solution is toorient the arrays towards south east or south west. A preliminary experiment with salad was carried out confirmingthese results. The realizable potential for Germany in a conservative estimate was found to be 53 GW which is equalto the official goal for 2020. Much more potential can be expected for arid and semiarid regions.