Proper design for the integration of photovoltaic and agricultural production according to the agrivoltaic paradigm

The intercontinental agreements of the conference of parties, and European policies such as the Green Deal require countries like Italy to respect stringent limits on the production of electricity from traditional sources. Italy's response to this line of action has been the development of the PNIEC and the PNRR, two plans aimed at the development and recovery of the country in every area, with the utmost attention to the energy sector. In this intricate political scenario, AgriVoltaic (AV)represents an interesting technological alternative for the installation of massive photovoltaic systems in territories where the availability of land is limited. The double use of the land in the agrivoltaic sites allows to "doubly harvest from the sun", increasing the land use exploitation with lower environmental impact. This effect strongly depends on the system configuration for both the PV and agricultural sides. In this work a PV plant designed in Southern Italy is illustrated, in which each hectare can be used for a PV plant with rated power of 0.7 MWp and about 900 Arbequina olive trees. The effect of different module layouts on the photovoltaic and crop production is analysed, with particular focus on the shadowing effect. This study highlights that there is a trade-off between a high-density PV module arrangement, with high PV production and low agricultural harvesting, and a highly spaced arrangement with lower PV production. Using mathematical model to perform analysis on both the energetic and agronomical sides, this work combines its result into a financial analysis to shape the best investment features. Finally, the “land use saving” analysis is performed to compare the agrivoltaic with the traditional photovoltaic and agricultural plants. The final purpose of this work is to clearly define the value of the agrivoltaic technology in the development of a sustainable energetic horizon.