Design Considerations for Agrophotovoltaic Systems: Maintaining PV Area with Increased Crop Yield

Land use constraints have motivated investigation into the spatial coexistence of photovoltaics and agriculture. Existing experimental work has emphasized fixed south-facing configurations with traditional commercial panel shapes, and modeling work is sparse. Previous work also concludes that agriculture-photovoltaic (agrophotovoltaic) systems either decrease crop yield or are limited to shade-tolerant crops. In this work, we explore the effects of different PV array configurations and panel designs on field insolation. We find that east-west tracking configurations outperform fixed south-facing configurations due to shadow migration paths. Additionally, we show through optical modeling that utilization of mini-modules in patterned panel designs may create more optimal conditions for plant growth while using the same area of PV, thus improving the land-use efficiency of the agrophotovoltaic system.