Economic feasibility of using agrivoltaics for tomato farming

Abstract

Agrivoltaics or agrophotovoltaics (APV), which simply describes farming under a canopy of PV panels, has been recently gaining a wider implementation to improve farming yields as well as generate electricity on the same piece of land. The presented study undertakes an economic analysis to justify the implementation of agrivoltaics in a tomato farm. Three research cases are investigated; Case 1 is the control scenario which is just ordinary tomato farming that is used as a baseline. And then there are Cases 2 and 3, which are low-density and high-density agrivoltaics, respectively. The farm is irrigated from a borehole using a diesel generator in Case 1 and solar pumps in the Agrivoltaics Cases 2 and 3. The study found that tomato harvest is reduced by a minimum of 16% in agrivoltaics setup. However, this reduced harvest is compensated by the PV output. The payback period has been calculated considering the capital costs of the PV system and other operational costs within the farm, and it is found that Case 2 and Case 3 have 3 years and 3.6 years payback periods, respectively. While on the other hand, ordinary tomato farming is unattractive with a lengthy payback period of 17.5 years. Net present value analysis is also used to determine the profitability of the three scenarios over a 10-year period, and the agrivoltaics scenarios are calculated to be profitable while ordinary tomato farming is not profitable. Therefore, this study justifies economic investment in agrivoltaics for tomato farming in Botswana.