A Combined Shading and Radiation Simulation Tool for Defining Agrivoltaic Systems

Abstract

Agrivoltaic systems have the potential to resolve rapidly rising global food and energy challenges by co-locating agriculture and solar photovoltaics (PV). In the United States, Massachusetts created the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART) Program to incentivize agrivoltaic development. The program relies on a shading-only simulation tool to differentiate agrivoltaic sites from traditional solar farms. In this paper, we demonstrate that radiation must be considered along with shading to identify land suitable for agricultural activity in agrivoltaic systems. To this end, we present a combined shading and radiation simulation tool and show that percent shade does not singularly determine land available for crop growth. Thus, we recommend the SMART Program update their current method for defining agrivoltaic systems to include radiation modeling.