Project R-14432

Novel Photovoltaic Module Designs for Agrivoltaic Applications (Research)

The need to drive forward the energy transition and target climate change has seen the continuous growth of photovoltaic (PV) module installations. However, PV requires large areas of land, and though rooftop solar is increasing in installed capacity, its installation rate will not be fast enough to meet the targets set for the energy transition. Also, ground-mounted PV installations are facing challenges due to loss of biodiversity and competition for limited land resources with agriculture. Agrivoltaics (AV) offers dual land-use and has been proposed as a suitable solution to alleviate landuse competition between food and PV energy production, while driving forward the energy transition. AV systems such as overhead systems offer synergistic benefits as the panels protect the crops from hail, strong winds and extreme sunlight. Despite these synergies, AV leads to a trade-off between crop yield and PV energy generation. Thus, in the design of AV systems, special attention must be paid to the choice of PV technology, PV module design, AV system design, location, and crop types, to optimally address this trade-off: a challenge undertaken in this PhD thesis. In this work, we will design semi-transparent bifacial c-Si modules with various cell spacings, and coatings tailored to greenhouse and open overhead AV systems. By implementing spectrally resolved ray tracing, we can more accurately design these AV systems and estimate the energy and crop yields.

01 November 2023 - 31 October 2027