Improved system design for innovative PV applications (EUPI-PV Partnership)

Expected outcome

Agrivoltaics or the co-location of agricultural activity and PV electricity production is a novel form of PV deployment which could provide farmers with diversified revenue sources and ecological benefits, while reducing land use competition, siting restrictions or adverse impacts on biodiversity and agricultural production. Optimizing system designs and business practices will help to enable simultaneous land use creating synergy for both agriculture and electricity production; this can benefit farmers, lower PV costs and enable the European Union to reach the goals of the EU solar energy strategy.

Similarly, offshore/nearshore PV systems represent a tremendous deployment potential in Europe and globally, due to their advantages in conserving land resources and optimizing light utilization. However, prevailing technical challenges limit deployment in most sea conditions usually found in Europe.

Project results are therefore expected to contribute to some of the following expected outcomes, depending on the proposed system (agriPV or offshore/nearshore PV):

1. Harvesting of crops and photovoltaic electricity, providing sustainable solutions for energy production/use/efficiency, soil and biodiversity protection and water conservation.
2. Reinforce the European PV value chain, introduce new business models and open new markets for novel, bankable agri or offshore/nearshore PV systems.
3. Minimise the impact of PV on landscape/sea and environment exploiting its modularity and synergies of use. Promote offshore wind and PV co-location and system integration.
4. Significant improvement of designs that reduce both CAPEX and OPEX, maximize energy output and thus reduce LCoE.
5. Promote integrated and multi-dimensional policy design to overcome socio-technical challenges for agri and offshore/nearshore PV deployment.

Scope

Proposals must address only one of the two areas (agriPV or offshore/nearshore PV). They are expected to demonstrate:

• A comprehensive (system) modelling for an accurate and reliable energy yield assessment with comparable methodologies for biodiversity, plant-yield and quality in the case of agriPV, as well as power generation.
• Advanced system components and system concepts/architectures of adequate scale that minimise impact on land/sea/environment while maximizing energy output/optimising connection to the grid.
• Resilience and adaptation of the systems to climate change impacts (extreme events, or in the case of agriPV, changing agricultural practices and/or crops choices, etc.).
• Standardisation for module and structure design for these applications.
• Permitting process definition.
• System demonstrators of adequate scale (min 5 MW altogether) at different EU climate/sea zones.

Achieving societal acceptance and sustainability in agriPV development requires clarity in permitting procedures, promoting energy justice principles, mitigating agronomic risks, and balancing economic development with environmental conservation (notably biodiversity). These dimensions need to be addressed holistically with the involvement of policymakers, industry stakeholders, and local communities working towards a just and equitable deployment of agriPV. In the case of offshore/nearshore PV, aesthetic appreciation, as well as possible conflicts of interest related to water areas (with e.g., commercial shipping, fishing, sand extraction, military use, and recreational sailing) or colocation should be looked at.

Whenever the expected exploitation of project results entails developing, creating, manufacturing and marketing a product or process, or creating and providing a service, the plan for the exploitation and dissemination of results must include a strategy for such exploitation as well as a strong business case and sound exploitation strategy. The exploitation plan should include preliminary plans for scalability, commercialisation, and deployment (feasibility study, business plan) indicating the possible funding sources to be potentially used (in particular the Innovation Fund).

This topic requires the effective contribution of SSH disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership for Innovation in Photovoltaics (EUPI-PV). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on the results to the European Partnership for Innovation in Photovoltaics (EUPI-PV) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.