Technical and legislative developments of agrivoltaic systems: techno-economic analysis of a case study

Phasing out fossil fuels will require the installation of additional renewable power generation capacity, amongst other measures. A considerable part of this renewable capacity is going to take the form of photovoltaic systems. These systems will occupy sizeable portions of land. This has created concerns about the potential loss of agricultural land. The agrivoltaic concept consists in combining photovoltaic installations and agricultural practises. Development of agrivoltaic has been assessed both in terms of technology and legislative framework. A case study in southern Italy has been considered, on which a techno-economic analysis was performed. The analysis was repeated for different locations in Italy to account for the different producibilities. Producibility simulations were obtained in PVSyst. The conclusions are the following. First, non-incentivized agrivoltaic systems’ LCOE is comparable, but still higher than the LCOE of ground mounted photovoltaic systems. Agrivoltaic systems have yet to become truly competitive to ground mounted systems. Secondly, the incentive is appropriate for its purpose: it will definitely support the spread of agrivoltaic installations. Lastly, non-incentivized agrivoltaic systems might become viable in the future, but only if their cost keeps diminishing and the electricity price remains high.