Potential of Agrivoltaic Systems to Increase US Food, Energy, and Water Security

Abstract:

Agrivoltaic systems co-locate agricultural growth with Photovoltaic solar energy production, improving overall land use efficiency and mitigating concerns over land competition between existing agricultural use and increased solar energy development. The agrivoltaic approach has been shown to reduce overall water demand as a result of panel shading, increase panel efficiency due to the cooling effects of the crop’s latent heat exchange, and potentially increase yield for certain shade tolerant crops. In order to estimate the potential of wide-spread agrivoltaic implementation it is necessary to consider both the systems-level economic implications and the on the ground plant physiology in these systems.

We present a reduced-order cost analysis which estimates that it would be feasible to meet 20% of the US electricity demand by converting less than 1% of US farmlands to Agrivoltaic production. We anticipate a cost of $1.20 trillion over 25 years with a net present value of 66.5 billion at the end of the project life. This undertaking also has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by 330.5 metric tons annually while creating over 100,000 jobs, primarily in rural areas. Additionally, we present ongoing field trials of Red Hawk kidney beans (Phaseolous vulgaris) on a 482-kW array located on the Oregon State University Vegetable farm which highlight field level methodologies for modeling vegetative growth in agrivoltaic conditions.