Pietro Elia Campana, Bengt Stridh, Torsten Hörndahl, Sven-Erik Svensson, Sebastian Zainali, Silvia Ma Lu , Tekai Eddine Khalil Zidane, Paolo De Luca, Stefano Amaducci, Michele Colauzzi

Agrivoltaic systems, which allow the coexistence of crop and electricity production on the same land, are considered an integrated water-energy-food nexus solution to allow the simultaneous attainment of conflicting Sustainable Development Goals. This study aims to analyse experimental results on ley grass yield and quality response to shadings in the first agrivoltaic system in Sweden and validate an integrated modelling platform for assessing agrivoltaic systems' performances before installation. An economic analysis is carried out to compare the profitability of agrivoltaic with conventional ground-mounted photovoltaic systems and to identify the most sensitive parameters affecting the profitability through a Monte Carlo analysis.
Despite an average reduction of about 25% for photosynthetically active radiation produced by the agrivoltaic systems supporting structures and PV modules, no significant statistical yield was observed between the samples under the agrivoltaic system compared to the samples in the reference area. The agrivoltaic system attained a land equivalent ratio of 1.27 and 1.39 in 2021 and 2022, respectively. The validation results of the integrated modelling platform show that the sub-model concerning the crop yield response to shading conditions tends to underestimate the actual average crop yield under the agrivoltaic system of about 15% when no crop adaption measures to shadings are provided as input. If measured leaf area index information concerning the ley grass adaptation under shading conditions is provided as input to the sub-model, a more satisfactory model prediction is attained. The results of the economic analysis show that from a net present value perspective, agrivoltaic systems can produce about 30 times more than a conventional crop rotation in Sweden.