Techno-Economic Evaluation of Different Agri-Photovoltaic Designs for the Hot Arid Ecosystem of Western Rajasthan, India

Abstract

The rising trend of solar PV generation has led to land use competition. The only solution to this challenge lies in agri-photovoltaic system. Government of India has also formulated a scheme ‘ Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan translating to farmer energy security and guarantee scheme wherein the subsidy and on-grid net metering can be extended if and only if the power plant capacity varies between 500 kW-2 MW. In view of this policy it becomes necessary to compute the techno-economics of this system with respect to economic parameters viz. LCC, LCB, BCR, NPW, A, IRR, PBP and LCOE. We observed that the value of LCOE for one row PV array with irrigated crops 3.17 INR/kWh and one row PV array with rain fed crops 3.33 INR/kWh were lower than conventional ground-mounted photovoltaics 3.45 INR/kWh. The shade loving crops such as snap melon for rain fed and brinjal for irrigated condition revealed that the maximum returns per ha for rain fed AVS in ORPVA FD with snap melon is INR 3924256/ha annum and in irrigated AVS ORPVA FD with brinjal is INR 4182328/ha annum. The ORPVA irrigated showed the best economic parameters by ORPVA Rainfed and GMPV.