REPORT: AGRIVOLTAICS
Three reasons why agrivoltaics could be key renewables sector in India Geography is a major factor why the country is best to adopt agrivoltaics, IEEFA says.
I
ndia has set its target locked on increasing the capacity of renewables to 500-gigawatts by 2050. And one sector that it could tap in its energy transition is agrivolatics or the installation of solar panels in lands used for agriculture, the the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) claimed. To back this up, IEEFA gave three reasons. The most obvious reason would be the country’s geography—the majority of India’s land area is used for farming. Second reason is that this renewable sector will address the expected increase in India’s energy demand growth and, finally, provide socio-economic opportunities, especially for the rural sector. However, there is a need for implementation of policies that would encourage adoption of agrivoltaics such as allowing non-farming commercial activities in most states, providing incentives, and funding programmes. Globally, agrivoltaics installed capacity has grown from about 5 megawatts (MW) in 2012 to approximately 2.9GW today, led mostly by Germany, France, and Italy, whose COVID-19 pandemic recovery plan devotes over €1b to establishing 2GW of agrivoltaic projects, said IEEFA Contributor Charles Worringham, citing recent reports. There has also been an increasing number of research and empirical experience, as seen in the 2021 Agrivoltaics Conference. It is just in its second year but
India is capable of producing solar power in higher quantities and more reliably than most European countries
Indian conditions may favour particular types of agrivoltaic technology
12 ASIAN POWER
it has already attracted 84 abstracts and delegates from 39 countries. In India, a joint German-Indian report has listed 16 existing installations, and has also developed a publicly accessible online map of these projects. An additional 7MW solar power project for Gro Solar Energy in Maharashtra with low-height crops between modules has been announced, and others are in various stages of development. Even at a very early stage and composed mostly of small-scale research and demonstration projects, agrivoltaics remain relevant to India for three reasons according to IEEFA: scale and scope of electricity system growth, geographic, and socioeconomic opportunities for the rural sector. India is expected to see significant energy demand growth over the coming decades, along with the intensifying calls to accelerate clean energy transition. The country will see a far more extensive power infrastructure growth of all types and strong incentives to build a geographically diverse and robust network, at speed. This will favour generation types that can be built quickly and at a range of scales, which could favour growth of agrivoltaics. For the second reason, 60% of India’s land area is farmed, higher than the world average of 39%, according to World Bank data. Whilst areas such as Rajasthan offer especially high levels of generation potential, large tracts of the country are capable of producing solar power in higher
quantities and more reliably than almost any European country with the exception of Spain and Portugal. This also presents socio-economic opportunities to the country’s rural sector. Indian cities are seeing additional growth stress due to large-scale seasonal migration of millions of rural citizens who seek work in cities for that period. As India faces declining farm size, with over 70% of rural households owning less than one hectare of land based on government data and unreliable weather, variable access to market and price instability any innovations that could strengthen the rural economy, stabilise agricultural employment and grow non-agriculture work could contribute to relieving the pressures of rapid growth on India’s cities. Tech development Indian conditions may favour particular types of agrivoltaic technology. A variation of special interest to India is the use of bifacial panels arrayed in widely spaced rows, which in addition to the different generation properties explained below, reduces dust accumulation, an important aspect of maintenance, especially in more arid regions. Vertical bifacial panel arrays, a layout being tried by India’s National Institute of Solar Energy as well as by Germany’s Next2Sun GmbH and Märladalen University in Sweden, have the property of generating maximum power in a morning and an afternoon peak, complementing the typical solar profile of midday peaking. The late afternoon generation this configuration allows could partly relieve evening peak demand to the extent that loads can be shifted earlier, as may be possible for some residential cooling, or by reducing the time between generation and discharge of batteries, enabling more flexible charging schedules. A research group at Lahore University of Management Sciences has undertaken extensive modelling of these layouts for relevant latitudes, suggesting high levels of generation relative to conventional configurations. If time-of-day pricing is introduced for feed-in tariffs, as well as on the consumer side, vertical bifacial arrays could be a particularly attractive option for agrivoltaics developers in India. Meanwhile, in India, several groups have already made a strong start in research to establish the circumstances in which agrivoltaics can be viable. There are
