Techno Economic Modeling for Agrivoltaics: Can Agrivoltaics be more profitable than Ground mounted PV?

TL;DR

This paper develops a systematic techno-economic model to evaluate whether agrivoltaics can be more profitable than traditional ground-mounted PV, considering crop value, module configuration, and land costs.

Contribution

It introduces a simple economic feasibility criterion and explores how module design and land costs influence agrivoltaics profitability compared to ground-mounted PV.

Findings

High-value crops and reduced module density improve AV profitability.

Higher module to land cost ratio (M_L) favors AV with high-value crops.

Additional feed-in-tariffs can make AV economically comparable to GMPV.

Abstract

Agrivoltaics (AV) is a dual land-use approach to collocate solar energy generation with agriculture for preserving the terrestrial ecosystem and enabling food-energy-water synergies. Here, we present a systematic approach to model the economic performance of AV relative to standalone ground-mounted PV (GMPV) and explore how the module design configuration can affect the dual food-energy economic performance. A remarkably simple criterion for economic feasibility is quantified that relates the land preservation cost to dual food-energy profit. We explore case studies including both high and low value crops under fixed tilt bifacial modules oriented either along the conventional North/South (N/S) facings or vertical East/West (E/W) facings. For each module configuration, the array density is varied to explore an economically feasible design space relative to GMPV for a range of module to land cost ratio (M_L) - a location-specific indicator relating the module technology (hardware and installation) costs to the soft (land acquisition, tax, overheads, etc.) costs. To offset a typically higher AV module cost needed to preserve the cropland, both E/W and N/S orientated modules favor high value crops, reduced (<60%) module density, and higher M_L (>25). In contrast, higher module density and an increased feed-in-tariff (FIT) relative to GMPV are desirable at lower M_L. The economic trends vary sharply for M_L< 10 but tend to saturate for M_L> 20. For low value crops, ~15% additional FIT can enable economic equivalence to GMPV at standard module density. The proposed modeling framework can provide a valuable tool for AV stakeholders to assess, predict, and optimize the techno-economic design for AV