Investigating the potential of east/west vertical bifacial photovoltaic farm for agrivoltaic systems

Abstract

The sustainable supply of food, energy, and water resources under the additional pressures caused by climate change is a global grand challenge. In Pakistan and many other developing countries, population growth and escalating demands for clean energy, food, and water also impose mounting pressure on agricultural land, necessitating the rapid development of innovative, holistic, and climate-compatible solutions. Here, we use a self-consistent electrical–optical–thermal model to explore the potential of east/west (E/W) vertical bifacial photovoltaic (PV) farms for state-of-the-art agrivoltaic (AV) systems—an innovative production system that enables solar energy generation over crops—an approach that can solve key obstacles in solar energy growth for Pakistan and the world whilst ensuring food–water–climate security. We compare the performance of E/W vertical bifacial PV farms with north/south (N/S) tilted bifacial PV farms for PV energy production and ground irradiance available for crops. We show that optimally designed E/W vertical bifacial PV farms provide spatial homogeneity for crop light. We further explore the effect of soiling on PV energy yield and show that due to their inherent resilience to soiling losses, E/W vertical PV farms could reduce the water budget and could be the potential candidates to be mounted in AV systems particularly in the regions having scarce water supply.