Review on agrophotovoltaic systems with a premise on thermal management of photovoltaic modules therein

Agrophotovoltaics (APV) is the coexistence of solar photovoltaics (PV) and agriculture on the same piece of land. Although the concept of APV is known for the last two decades, its actual penetration in society is inconsiderable. The objective of the current article is to discuss the various APV systems explored in the past and to highlight the futuristic APVs. Furthermore, this study presents the review of the available experimental work on the performance and environmental and techno-economic aspects of the APV systems. The key features, crop selection criteria, feasible crops for Indian climatic conditions, and the future research directions of APV systems have been summarized. Furthermore, apart from the known techno-economic benefits of APV, a premise on its another utility for the thermal management of the solar PV modules by crops' natural transpiration cooling has been presented in this study. A theoretical study demonstrates the gain in the electrical output of the solar PV plant as compared with the conventional PV installation. The theoretical study has been carried out considering the meteorological data of Nagpur (21.1458 degrees N, 79.0882 degrees E). The estimation has been carried out using Nominal Operating Cell Temperature (NOCT) model, NREL irradiance database-NSRDB, and System Advisor Model (SAM). An experimental study has been conducted on APV systems with a 2-kW solar PV plant and tomato crops to investigate its actual performance. The study shows an increment of 17.96% in the daily energy generation as compared with the conventional solar PV power plant.

Automated summary

This article discusses the concept of Agrophotovoltaics (APV), explores various APV systems, and highlights future developments. The study summarizes the key features of APV systems, crop selection criteria, feasible crops for Indian climatic conditions, and future research directions. Additionally, it presents a theoretical study on the thermal management of solar PV modules using crops' natural transpiration cooling. The study shows an increase in daily energy generation compared to conventional solar PV systems. Experimental results also demonstrate the performance improvement of APV systems.