Agrivoltaics: A Climate-Smart Agriculture Approach for Indian Farmers

Abstract

India is a leader when it comes to agriculture. A significant part of the country’s population depends on agriculture for livelihood. However, many of them face challenges due to using unreliable farming techniques. Sometimes the challenges increase to the extent that they commit suicide. Besides, India is highly populated, and its population is steadily increasing, requiring its government to grow its GDP and increase its energy supply proportionately. This paper reviews integrating solar farming with agriculture, known as Agrivoltaics, as a Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) option for Indian farmers. This study is further supported by the Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis of agrivoltaics. Using the SWOT analysis, this article presents how agrivoltaics can make agriculture sustainable and reliable. This paper identifies rural electrification, water conservation, yield improvement, sustainable income generation, and reduction in the usage of pesticides as the strengths of agrivoltaics. Similarly, the paper presents weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to agrivoltaics in India. The research concludes with the findings that agrivoltaics have the potential of meeting multiple objectives such as meeting global commitments, offering employment, providing economic stability, increasing clean energy production capacity, conserving natural resources, and succeeding in several others. The paper also includes a discussion about the findings, suggestions, and implications of adopting agrivoltaics on a large scale in India.

A Photovoltaic Technology Review: History, Fundamentals and Applications

“…When it comes to the method of installation, photovoltaic systems can be divided in three categories: Ground Mounted systems, Building Applied and Building Integrated systems; each one having some advantages and disadvantages, as enumerated on Table 2 [114][115][116][117][118][119].…”

“…As previously referred, photovoltaic technology started to have the main goal of producing energy. However, nowadays, since there are already simple photovoltaic solutions to produce energy (even everyday devices, such as bag-packs, wristwatches, traffic signals, public illumination, agriculture water pump, among others) the goal has been changed to how to generate energy (electricity) in a more environmentally friendly way (green energy) [13,114]. This means that the goal is to generate energy from renewable sources, as photovoltaic ones, with less financial and ecological costs.…”

Modelling the suitability of agrivoltaics to deliver sustainable energy and food production in East Africa

“…Agrivoltaics, the integration of solar PV with agricultural land such as growing crops beneath the panels, is an emerging innovation that simultaneously produces food and low-carbon electricity while also reducing potential land use conflicts between these competing goals 18 . As with conventional PV technology, its amenabilty to off-grid and mini-grid application renders it ideal for rural electrification 19 . As well as mitigating energy-food land use conflicts, the partial shade from the panels can improve crop growing environments by reducing evaporative water loss, daytime air temperatures and UV damage, improving both land productivity 20 and the range of crops which can be grown.…”

“…Despite rapidly expanding research in Europe [21][22][23][24] , the US [25][26][27] , and Asia 19,[28][29][30] , there is little research on agrivoltaics in East Africa, where the technology could deliver substantial livelihood benefits for rural communities lacking electricity access and food security. With abundant solar insolation, a growing PV market to address rural electrification goals, food systems limited by water availability, and climate change threatening water and food security, agrivoltaics could play a vital role in the region's energy transition 31 .…”

On the Relation Between Exciton Dynamics and Nano-Morphology in Organic Semiconductor Blends

“…Further, this spectra matching and portable nature of OPV-based solar cells are ideal for the use in agricultural areas where electrical grid access is difficult and spectral transmission engineering could be ideally utilized [238,239]. Additionally, The light weight nature OSC based electronics including OPV-based solar cells enables their incorporation into novel, light-weight, and wearable electronics useful in both consumer and medical products [240,241].…”