»Although agrivoltaic systems have already been successfully installed in some countries, in most regions the concept is still widely unknown. This conference is an opportunity to connect the scientific community and promote international exchange to advance agrivoltaic systems and the agrivoltatic technology worldwide. The focus is on bringing people, knowledge and ideas together,” says Max Trommsdorff, Conference Chair of AgriVoltaics 2021 and group head of Agrivoltaics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. Together with the French research institute INRAé and the conference organizer PSE Conferences & Consulting, Fraunhofer ISE initiated the AgriVoltaic conference for the first time in in 2020.

The conference will provide high-level scientific exchange and great networking opportunities for researchers from PV and agriculture (including agronomy, biology and hydrology) and for those working along the entire value chain, including manufacturers of  PV modules, mounting systems and trackers, EPC companies, renewable energy producers, providers of farm machinery,  seed producers, as well as farming associations, agricultural federations and similar stakeholder groups, including experts from politics and finance.

The conference covers four main topics:

Agrivoltaic systems

·      System assessment and performance indicators

·         System models and simulation

·         Decision support systems and optimization methods

 The management of agricultural production under photovoltaic panels

·         Shade tolerance, crop adaptation to agrivoltaic systems

·         Plant growth models

·         Variety selection

·         Plant pathology

·         Agronomic monitoring

·         Livestock management

·         Water management, rain harvest and water storage

·         Soil protection

Technical aspects

·         Data sharing and analytics

·         PV panels for agrivoltaics (bifacial, thin-film, organic PV, lead-free perovskite, spectral splitting, CPV, etc.)

·         Agrivoltaic mounting systems and geometries (row distances, vertical clearances, PV row width, trackers, etc.)

·         Shadowing ratios

·         Case studies, best-practice technologies

·         Quality assurance and standardization, safety

·         Smart farming and artificial intelligence solutions

Environmental, legal, and socio-economic aspects

·         Legal framework of agrivoltaics

·         Environmental impact

·         Agrivoltaics in public policies

·         Social acceptance

·         dissemination of agrivoltaics

·         Ethics of agrivoltaics

·         Economics of agrivoltaics

·         Potential analysis