https://www.mdu.se/

Globally there is a rise in use of renewable sources of energy particularly solar energy and agrivoltaic systems emerges as a system which helps to increase the land use efficiency. In previous research agrivoltaic systems are evaluated based on some key performance indicators like energy yield, land equivalent ratio, agricultural yield etc. This research project aims to evaluate the performance of agrivoltaic system in terms of water food energy nexus. Further in this study the performance of Sweden’s first agrivoltaic system set up outside Västerås is evaluated by varying the gap between the rows of photovoltaic modules. In this agrivoltaic system vertical bifacial photovoltaic modules are used and the PVsyst® is used for designing and simulating the photovoltaic system. For this different indicator has been used which evaluates the performance in terms of water food energy nexus. Then the performance of Swedish agrivoltaic system is compared with German agrivoltaic system. Results shows that in Swedish agrivoltaic system row spacing of 10 m achieved highest score in terms of water food energy nexus indicators. Swedish system has ground coverage ratio of 20.76 %, the annual energy yield is found to be 622 MWh/ha and land equivalent ratio is calculated to be 1.10. The economic analysis of system shows the net present value of 31176 SEK and levelized cost of electricity to be 1.11 SEK/kWh. Profitability of this system increased when most of the generated electricity is self-consumed. German agrivoltaic system achieve higher score on water food energy nexus indicator scale.