What is Agrivoltaics? Agriculture + Photovoltaics

Agrivoltaics (or agrisolar) refers to the combination of solar photovoltaic (PV) generation with farming and agricultural operations to benefit each other.

Under the harsh Australian sunshine, solar PV can not only be rooftop-mounted, but installed on ground-mounted systems in paddocks and larger amounts of space.

The installation of ground mount solar systems offer both energy and livestock benefits for the ultimate combination.

How does Agrivoltaics Benefit Farms?

The combination of solar PV systems and agriculture offers several benefits for property owners and livestock.

One benefit includes the efficient use of land. Installing a ground-mounted solar system allows for efficiency of free and occupied land with the addition of renewable energy generation.

Adding a ground-mounted system in an agricultural area can be beneficial for farms with limited space where land is expensive or not worth it.

Farm owners can additionally benefit by reducing water evaporation due to the shade from the ground solar system, reducing the requirements for heavy irrigation and water conserving efforts.

Is Adding Solar Power Worth it for Farms?

With a world moving towards renewable energy, grid electricity prices will continue to fluctuate which can negatively impact your business.

Being able to power day-to-day operations with sustainable energy, a solar system could help offset your heavy grid energy reliance, whilst also providing other various benefits like increased shade and remote system flexibility.

Deciding on whether your farm could benefit from solar power really depends on your overall consumption, production times, equipment, and budget.

We offer free energy assessments to help farms find the ideal energy solutions.

What Kind of Farms can Benefit from Agrivoltaics?

Farming can range in productions, from dairy farms, to poultry farms, to general livestock, which all generally needs a lot of electricity to stay operational.

Investing in solar power can enable elements like irrigation systems, farming equipment, cooling and heating, livestock facilities, and lighting to name a few.

Battery storage is also a great way to avoid consuming expensive grid electricity during on-peak periods. They also act as a backup source of energy during grid outages which can slow or halt your production line.

Does Ground Mounted Solar Affect Livestock?

Small animals such as sheep and chickens can be ranged beneath solar modules for an optimal agrisolar system, and to graze on suitable grass.

The animal manure can act as a soil fertiliser and the animal grazing can prevent undergrowth interfering with PV generation activities.

Ease of animal movement to fresh areas using array structures as fencing elements prevents overgrazing. Some experimental work suggests that a green ground cover reflects less infrared heat than bare ground, enhancing PV module thermal performance to a small but useful degree. Commonly used bifacial PV modules perform well with green grass albedo.

Solar for Apiculture Activities?

Under the heading of animal grazing, we can include apiculture activities. The energy that a typical beehive population expends in cooling the hive during hot weather is considerable and must detract from pollen foraging activities. Solar shading mitigates this energy expenditure.

This is in the area of Agrivoltaics, expertise of plant biologists and research may develop plant strains optimised for the shade environment, whether that environment is that of fixed tilt solar panel arrays or diurnal east west tracking arrays. Utilising elements of the array structure as trellises might be an option for particular crops. 

Because of the computer control over tilt angle (with east west tracking arrays in Australia), research may find optimum tilt algorithms to advantage plant growth at particular growth stages with minimal impact on PV production. In any case farmers and solar owners can strike agreements to advantage both parties in compromise situations.