How to design an agrivoltaic system: height, spacing, panels and water

Most solar plants are designed to squeeze as many panels as possible onto a plot. Agrivoltaic design starts from the opposite end: what does the crop need, what does the farmer need to drive through, and how much power can we add without breaking either?

Here are the decisions that matter most, in roughly the order you should make them.

1. Start with the crop and the machinery

Before anyone draws a panel, decide:

• Which crops will be grown, and how tall do they get?
• What equipment needs to pass underneath or between rows: a person with a sickle, a power tiller, or a full tractor?
• How will the crop be irrigated?

Everything else follows from these answers. See crops that grow well under solar panels.

2. Choose the structure height

There are broadly two approaches:

• Elevated (overhead) systems. Panels on tall posts with farming underneath. Fraunhofer ISE's research plant at Heggelbach, Germany, uses a five-metre structure so farm machinery can work below. Germany's DIN SPEC 91434 standard treats systems with more than 2.1 m clearance as a separate category from lower ones.
• Interspace systems. Panels at lower height in rows, with crops grown in the gaps between them. Cheaper to build but limits machinery to the space between rows.

Taller structures cost more in steel and foundations and must handle stronger wind loads, but they spread light more evenly and keep the whole plot farmable.

3. Decide how much ground to cover

The share of land covered by panels is the main dial between electricity and crop. More panels mean more power and less light. Europe has started to set limits: France's 2024 agrivoltaics decree generally caps panel coverage at 40% of the plot, and requires yield loss to stay under 10%.

TERI's estimate of India's agri-PV potential used power densities of roughly 0.42 to 0.75 MW per hectare, which gives a sense of how much lower density agri-PV is compared with a conventional solar park.

4. Pick the orientation and panel type

The 2023 IISD/CUTS review of Indian pilots found bifacial panels and sun-tracking showed promising results.

5. Plan for water from the start

Panels concentrate rainfall along their drip edges. Left alone, that cuts channels in the soil and leaves dry strips. Handled well, it's a resource. ICAR-CAZRI reports harvesting about 1.5 lakh litres of rainwater per acre from its panels in Jodhpur, enough for roughly 40 mm of irrigation.

You'll also need water to clean panels in dusty regions. Agree who supplies it and where the wash water goes, so it doesn't damage the crop.

6. Don't forget the boring parts

• Cable routes buried deep enough not to be hit by ploughing.
• Fencing and access that let farm workers in without compromising plant security.
• Foundations that don't leave large concrete footprints in the field.
• Monitoring of both power output and crop yield, so you can prove the land is still being farmed.

7. Agree on how success will be measured

Europe's rules measure crop yield against a reference. Germany's DIN SPEC 91434 expects at least 66% of the reference yield; France requires at least 90% of a control zone's yield. India has no equivalent national standard yet, which makes it even more important to set your own baseline before construction.

Where Triton fits

We design protected structures for Indian climates and grow in them ourselves. If you're planning an agrivoltaic project and want the crop side designed properly, get in touch. Read more on how other countries regulate agrivoltaics.