AGRIVOLTAICS IN ITALY: Technical and economic evaluations in the current regulatory context.

Agrivoltaic systems could be one possible multi-target solution to energy transition, climate adaptation and farmers’ low incomes. In fact, they combine food and energy production on the same land in a synergistic way. The actual Italian legislation is evolving a lot in the past few years, following the D.L. 77/2021 on agrivoltaic, it is now possible to see who can install and benefits from it and how to access to possible PNRR funds. There are different types of agrivoltaic: on open or closed fields, simple or advanced, on single or multi axes etc… All these systems are still under studying and each could be applied on a specific situation. Now most of the experimentations come from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, situated in Germany. Agrivoltaics have multiple benefits beside the economic ones; they can help to create more resilient agricultural systems against climate change and helping to innovate the agricultural sector but there are also some drawbacks starting from the investment costs to the management of a complex system during its lifetime. An agronomic report is required at the beginning to explain the crop and landscape mitigation plan. An advance agronomic management is essential to justify this investment. Farmers need to apply precision farming with minimum tillage to avoid damages to the panels and advanced monitoring to see the benefits of partial shadows on the crops. Agricultural activity has to be maintained and demonstrated during the years to preserve the fundings. Economic investments are quite high but the revenues as well both for the investor which is usually an electric company but also for farmers who can get revenues both from crops and the lease of the building right. Moreover, some agricultural costs can be lowered for example irrigation. There are already multiple examples of these systems in Italy and it seems there will be an increased amount of them in the next years because they are more socially accepted and for this have a faster authorization process.