Performance analysis of Agrophotovoltaic systems with Solanum lycopersicum crops

Abstract

The coexistence of solar photovoltaics (PV) and agriculture on the same piece of land is known as Agrophotovoltaics (APV). Along with a few additional advantages, APV systems are presently being investigated for the thermal control of solar PV modules using natural transpiration cooling from crops. In the present work, an experimental setup of a grid-connected rooftop solar PV system of 2.0 kW was designed, developed, and installed at Nagpur [21° 08′ N, 46.72″ E] India. The Solanum lycopersicum plants commonly known as ‘Tomato’ were cultivated below the 50 % solar PV modules to convert the half PV power plant into an Agrophotovoltaic system. The experiments were performed to compare the electrical and thermal performance of the conventional solar PV plant and the APV plant for one month. Along with the power plant’s performance, the overall growth of tomato crops was also monitored throughout experiments. The experiments conclude that as compared with the conventional solar PV system, the temperature of the solar PV modules in the APV system reduces by around 6.51 %lower for the height-I whereas for height –II the module temperature of APV system was lower by around 3.12 % and the power output increases by17.96 % more energy for height-I whereas for height-II the APV plant generates 14.70 % more energy per day. Also, it had been observed that the growth of the cultivated tomato crops in the APV was the same as that of the crop grown in the open sky. Based on the current experimental research, a 1 MW APV system's expected yearly electricity generation would be 215,520 kWh higher than a normal solar PV plant for height-I and176400 kWh more electricity for height-II. Furthermore, in addition to the bonus of increased power generation, the same piece of land would be used to produce tomato or other high-yielding crops.