Optimised Tracker Algorithm Enables an Agri-PV Plant With Organic Strip Farming and Solar Electricity Generation

Abstract

When constructing solar farms, it is important to consider the impact on our living environment and on the use of farmland, ideally contributing to biodiversity and maintaining soil quality. In the Symbizon project, we are developing algorithms for the solar trackers that will balance both crop demands and solar electricity yield. We have simulated the soil irradiance in the farmed strips and determined the annual electricity yield. We varied the algorithm that determines the tracker angle as function of the conditions, including position of the sun, amount of irradiance on panels or on the soil etc. We compare the electricity yield with that of a HSAT PV system with twice the number of trackers and the soil irradiance with that of a field without PV. We show that, for all investigated algorithms, the soil irradiance is at least 60% of the single-use strip farming irradiance. In addition, the electricity production of the agri-PV system varies between 20% and 66% of an optimised HSAT PV system without farming. The next step will be to also optimise the tracker strategy to adapt to local conditions, e.g., allowing more light on the crops during low temperature humid conditions, but shading crops during hot and dry conditions, taking into account actual crop models instead of soil irradiance. Combined, the sum of the relative crop and electricity yield is always larger than 100%, showing that these agri-PV systems make better use of the available land for food and energy harvesting.