ENERGY, CROP AND LAND-USE ASSESSMENT OF AGRIVOLTAIC SYSTEMS UNDER DIFFERENT PV TECHNOLOGIES AND CONFIGURATIONS

Abstract

The increasing demand for energy and food creates an important land use problem, particularly in populated countries like India. Agrivoltaics (APV) is a promising solution by enabling simultaneous solar energy generation and agricultural production on the same land. This study shows a satellite driven framework for assessing the energy land efficiency of APV systems in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, using tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) as a test crop. A five year hourly meteorological dataset from 2020 to 2025 was used to model PV performance across eight panel technologies. The analysis considered five APV configurations with varying row spacing, panel height and ground cover ratio. The Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) was employed as the primary efficiency metric, combining crop yield and energy production components. Results demonstrate that all 40 combinations achieve LER>1.0, confirming land-use efficiency for the Coimbatore region. The optimal configuration achieved by HJT bifacial panels with wide APV configuration (8m spacing, 3.0m height) with highest LER of 1.86. This study also found out that the bifacial panels outperformed monofacial panels. The economic analysis revealed payback periods ranging from 2.2 to 8.5 years, with top configurations demonstrating favourable returns despite higher initial costs. This satellite driven framework provides policymakers, farmers and investors with a quantitative decision support tool for optimizing APV deployment in tropical Indian conditions.