Development of an Adjustable Solar Array Density of Agrivoltaic System for Bok Choy (Brassica rapa subsp. Chinensis) Growth Condition

The ground-mounted solar farms require large acres of land to provide enough energy to reduce the carbon emissions that other energy sources produce. The Agrivoltaic System promotes the dual use of land to provide both food and clean energy, lessening the competition for limited land resources that solar farm development is experiencing. The purpose of this research is to design an Agrivoltaic System that is capable of switching its solar array density to promote the growth conditions of Bok Choy (Brassica rapa subsp. Chinensis) crop. The research is conducted in Alitagtag Batangas, covering a total land area of 45 square meters with four (4) different setups conventional farming (CF), low density (LD), high density (HD), and the proposed setup linear adjusting (LA). The LD has a 1.6m distance between panels, HD has 0.6m, and LA can switch on both spacing configurations. The growth rate results show that the proposed system (LA) has the most favorable condition which resulted in a promising growth rate in terms of Height, Circumference, Leaf Width, and Length, compared to other setups (HD, LD, CF). The Land Efficiency Ratio (LER) shows that the LA, HD, and LD have 76.5%, 71.2%, and 61.4% higher land efficiency as compared to when the land is primarily used for Solar Farms and Conventional Farming (CF), respectively.