Design of Agro-photovoltaic System for Optimized Energy Generation and Crop Yield using Fuzzy Framework

A new approach called Agro-photovoltaics (APV) promotes the co-location of crop production and electricity generation using photovoltaic (PV) technologies. The consumption of food and energy has greatly increased as the population has grown. As a result, researchers have begun to focus on the sensible utilization of power and renewable resources. APV can address rural energy issues, such as reliance on fossil fuels, and offer a reliable rural income source, primarily through agricultural production and also rental income. Additionally, there is an increase in photovoltaic (PV) systems based on farms and commercial megawatt APV installations worldwide. Here, we study east/west (E/W) facing vertical bi-facial panel structures for AV farming and demonstrate that they may offer a significantly better daytime irradiance distribution compared to fixed-tilt south-faced PV structures, signifying a greater fit for monoculture cultivation. In this paper, a new method for the optimal design of an Agro PV system has been proposed. A fuzzy performance index based on three objectives namely, maximum energy generation, maximum land availability for agriculture, and minimizing the land under the shadow is proposed. The index can be used to design the Agro PV system, simultaneously maximizing PV generation without significant crop yield loss. The vertical bi-facial farm may not always be superior; it could still be an attractive choice for APV due to its distinctive advantages such as most inferior land coverage, an almost minor obstruction to the farm tools and rainwater, and reduced PV soiling loss. Further work in the paper is generated and verified using PVSOL premium 2023 software.