The potential of Agrivoltaic systems in TURKEY

Abstract

Turkey is located in unique geographic position and it is like a bridge between the continents of Asia and Europe. Besides this, it lying partly between 36°–42° NL and 26°–45° EL in the Northern Hemisphere. Turkey has total surface area 780,043 km2 and its land use areas’ 31.1% is agricultural lands. Turkey Statistical Institute (TUIK) state that Turkey’s population is 83.155 million in 2020. Population growth rate of country is 13.9% as annually. On account of Turkey’ vary topographical characteristics, it has available many climate zones. These are Mediterranean Climate that is hot, dry summers and rainy, mild winters, the Black Sea Climate that is although in the coastal area cool summer and warm winters, snowy the higher parts climate is snowy and cold, also the Terrestrial Climate have high temperature differences between day and night-summer and winter. In addition to the Marmara Climate shows all of above side climate characteristics due to transition between the Terrestrial, Black Sea and Mediterranean climates. Turkey is situated in a geography quite lucky in terms of solar energy. Although it is geographically well located, it is limited in terms of agricultural land. Agrivoltaic systems are a good concept in terms of expanding the agricultural lands and increasing the efficiency of the produced electricity from solar systems. Agrivoltaic system is a kind of term or method which is combination of growing crops and producing electricity on the same land. In solar plant, to produce 1 MW electricity requires approximately 20.000 m2 land. The total installed capacity is 6493 MW of Solar Power Plants in 2019, in Turkey. When calculated require area to total produce capacity in Turkey, it is obtained that approximately 130 km2 area is needed. In addition, in term of the suitable agricultural products to be grown are vegetables between the PV panel arrays and 25% of agricultural crops produced in Turkey are vegetables. This study aims that presentation to the potential of Agrivoltaic system especially considering three cities in Turkey.