Economic Trade-offs in Agrivoltaic Systems with Commodity Crops in the U.S. Midwest
Falling photovoltaic (PV) costs and rising market incentives are driving the deployment of PV on cropland in the U.S. Midwest, raising concerns about displacing food production. Agrivoltaic (AV) systems, which co-locate PV and crop production, could reduce this land-use conflict. We develop a benefit-cost framework to compare net returns from AV, stand-alone PV, and crop-only production on a representative field in the U.S. Midwest, identifying when AV is profitable for both solar developers and farmers. Using integrated crop and energy models, we assess AV designs that accommodate soybean production with conventional equipment. Results show that AV systems are less profitable than PV-only for solar developers, due to higher panel height costs, and less attractive to farmers, given yield losses from shading. We discuss how technology improvements and shifts in crop and electricity prices would be needed to make AV competitive in the Midwest.
Paul Mwebaze is a research economist and project manager of SCAPES at the Institute of Sustainability, Energy and Environment (ISEE) at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. He researches the economics of using land for food and energy production.
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