Agri-voltaics or Solar farming: the concept of integrating solar PV based electricity generation and crop production in a single land use system

In view of future requirement of both energy and food, agri-voltaic system (AVS) has been proposed as a “mixed systems associating solar panels and crop at the same time on the same land area”. Considering the available land area between PV rows and wash out water from PV panels along with harvested rainwater from panel, few crops which can be grown in agri-voltaic system were screened based on their height, water requirement and shade tolerance characteristics. However, for future establishment of agri-voltaic system in India, performance of crops at different agro-climatic zones needs to be carried out through field experimentation.