Novel Agro-Photovoltaic systems

Agro-Photovoltaics (or Agrivoltaics) denotes approaches to use agricultural areas simultaneously to produce crops and to generate PV electricity. In this way, Agro photovoltaics increases land-use efficiency and enables PV capacity to be expanded solving the problem of energy poverty in the agricultural sector, while still retaining fertile arable areas for agriculture.

The proposal should address all of the following:

• Develop and demonstrate agro-photovoltaic systems or building integrated agro-photovoltaic systems for green houses employing PV cell technologies/systems that allow and are adapted to appropriate growth conditions (plant variety and local geography) and at the same time produce electricity covering all year-through energy needs (e.g. for cooling/heating, watering, etc.) and increased crop yield.
• Demonstrate feasibility, reliability, replicability, robustness and ease of maintenance of the system and its performance using relevant KPIs (for e.g. ground coverage ratio, energy and agricultural yield, spatial efficiency, etc.).
• Demonstrate a business case for the concept and market introduction strategy.
• Address the following related aspects: low environmental impact (avoiding or minimizing land impact from PV systems), resource efficiency and circularity potential.
• Include a strong involvement of citizens/civil society, together with academia/research, industry/SMEs and government/public authorities.

This topic requires the effective contribution of SSH disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions, as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities.