Agrivoltaics (Agri-PV, AV)—the joint use of land for the generation of agricultural products and energy—has recently been rapidly gaining popularity, as it can significantly increase income per unit of land area. In a broad sense, AV systems can include converters of solar energy, and also energy from any other local renewable source, including bioenergy. Current approaches to AV represent the evolutionary development of agroecology and integrated PV power supply to the grid, and can result in nearly doubled income per unit area. AV could provide a basis for a revolution in large-scale unmanned precision agriculture and smart farming which will be impossible without on-site power supply, reduction of chemical fertiliser and pesticides, and yield processing on site. These approaches could dramatically change the logistics and the added value production chain in agriculture, and so reduce its carbon footprint. Utilisation of decommissioned solar panels in AV could halve the cost of the technology and postpone the need for bulk PV recycling. Unlike the mainstream discourse on the topic, this review feature focuses on the possibilities for AV to become more strongly integrated into agriculture, which could also help in resolution of relevant legal disputes (considered as neither rather than both components).

Renewable energy systems design using average year weather data is a standard approach that works well for grid-tied systems, but for stand-alone ones, it leads to dramatic mistakes. We considered the effect of meteorological data temporal resolution (5, 10, 15, 20, 30 min; 1, 2, 3, 4 h) on a stand-alone hybrid system’s layout in terms of equipment cost, power supply reliability and maximum duration of interruption for monitoring equipment in the Alps. We have shown that lifecycle costs could be strongly (order of magnitude) underestimated for off-grid systems, as well as their reliability overestimated. Lower temporal resolution data lead to the underestimation of energy storage charge–discharge cycles (considering depth of discharge too)—real batteries are to be replaced more often, which matches our practical experience as well. Even a 5 to 10 min decrease in weather data temporal resolution leads to the estimated annual expenses being halved. In general, we recommend using 30 min. resolution.

Agrivoltaics (Agri-PV, AV) - the joint use of land for the production of agricultural products and energy - has recently been rapidly gaining popularity, as it can significantly increase income per unit of land area. In a broad sense, AV systems can include converters of not only solar, but also energy from any other local renewable source, including bioenergy. Current approach to AV represents an evolutionary development of agroecology and integrated PV power supply to the grid. That results in nearly doubled income per unit area. While AV could provide a basis for revolution in large-scale unmanned precision (intelligent) farming which is impossible without on-site power supply, chemical fertilisation and pesticides reduction, and yield processing on-site. These approaches could change the logistics of agriculture dramatically, and so, reduce its carbon footprint. Utilisation of decommissioned solar panels in AV could make the technology twice cheaper and postpone the need for bulk PV recycling. This review is mainly focused on the possibilities for AV to be stronger integrated into agriculture that could also help in relevant legal collisions (considered as neither rather than both components) resolution.

No abstract

: Electric air conditioning and heating systems capacity is growing rapidly. So does the nameplate capacity of PV power plants. While demand in cooling has a positive correlation with solar irradiationirradiance, the demand in heating has an opposite relation. In this study, different approaches of to design (aggregation; energy storagethermal, battery and implicit systems storage) and control (frequency conversion; variable and adaptive load) and their effects on the efficiency of an off-grid active thermal stabilisation system based on a solar-powered heat pump are analysed. The case considered is permafrost thermal stabilisation system in Norway. It is shown that proper layout and control of the system with an adaptive load can reduce the capital expenses expenditures and the total cost of ownership by 30-40%. Increase in the efficiency capacity factor and cooling stability of the systems with the aggregated and threshold power consumervariable load due to the principle of aggregation is studied. The downside of that is the increase in compressors operation time by 50% with variable load and by 25% per unit with aggregation which means more frequent replacement in terms of motor-hours. But The the feasibility of this approaches considered are applicable for a wide range of solar-powered facilities, but the results are is quite case sensitive and depends on the prices for low-power heat pumps. The prospects of using the excess refrigerant and soil for thermal energy storage instead of traditional electrochemical batteries are considered.