Global sensitivity based prioritizing the parametric uncertainties in economic analysis when co-locating photovoltaic with agriculture and aquaculture in China

Abstract

Teaming up photovoltaic (PV) with agriculture or aquaculture, namely, the agrivoltaics and aquavoltaics, create novel energy-food-(land or water) nexus offering mutual benefits potentially. At present, the profitability of these nexuses is still not well quantified, but it is usually what investors are most concerned about. Hence, an economic analysis framework is proposed to benchmark the profitability of both agrivoltaics and aquavoltaics systems, and further prioritize the most influencing factors for the project economy. The framework is applied in China indicating that the average simple payback period (SPP) ranges between 6.2–6.6 years for agrivoltaics projects, and 9.5–10.1 years for aquavoltaics projects. Capital cost of PV, solar resource richness, and feed-in-tariff are top three influencing factors for the profitability of both agrivoltaics and aquavoltaics systems. The national implementing potential of agrivoltaics and aquavoltaics would be up to 112 GW for agrivoltaics and 564 GW for aquavoltaics in China. Overall, compared to PV-only configuration, agrivoltaics and aquavoltaics contribute to more terms of Sustainable Development Goals to a greater extent, which could be emerging PV deployment patterns during the era of no subsidy on PV feed-in-tariff.