Agrivoltaic System: a Case Study of PV Production and Olive Cultivation in Southern Italy

Abstract

The double use of the land in the AgriVoltaic (AV) sites allows to “doubly harvest from the sun’, increasing the land use exploitation with lower environmental impact. This effect strongly depends on the system configuration for both the PV and agricultural sides. The choice is between a high-density PV module arrangement, with high PV production and low agricultural harvesting, or a highly spaced arrangement with lower PV production. The present work presents a case study in Southern Italy: the simulated PV plant can have two different layouts (rated power of 7.13 MW or 5. 6SMW), and each hectare can include the plantation of about 900 Arbequina olive trees.