Research Information System
8th International Conference on Engineering Technologies ICENTE 2024, Konya, Turkey, 21 - 23 November 2024, pp.163-167, (Full Text)
Agrivoltaic (AV) technology has become popular in the last decade since it efficiently allows both crop production and PV electricity generation on the same land. While AV technologies have made significant advances in Europe and North America, their implementation in Africa, despite the continent's great potential for solar energy, has been limited due to a lack of comprehensive research and pilot studies. This study investigates the feasibility of implementing agrivoltaic (AV) technology on existing soybean farms in Nigeria by assessing its potential. The methodology involves simulating an AV pilot system using Revit software to analyze how PV panel shading affects the crop surface area. The simulation results show that the shaded area under PV panels ranges from 25.67% to 31.29% of the total area. Additionally, we developed an empirical model for soybean crop yield based on the percentage of available light, indicating that yields decrease as shading increases. Nevertheless, our proposed system design ensures that 70% of the yield remains unaffected at all levels of shading. The advantages of the system were assessed using the land equivalent ratio (LER), which consistently equaled one, showing that the dual-purpose system is just as effective as single-purpose land in terms of productivity.