Toward assessing photovoltaic trackers effects on annual crops growth and building optimized agrivoltaics systems based on annual crops

The growing need for producing renewable energy such as photovoltaic electricity, and the increasing occurrences of heatwaves and drought affecting annual crops, could be addressed by the development of agrivoltaïc systems. Among photovoltaic installations, trackers, if well installed in crop fields, can fit with all types of agricultural systems, including passages of large crop sprayers, or with high solar needs plants, thanks to their highness, their small anchoring surface and their biaxial moving capacity. Modelling was used to test the effects of various trackers implementation configurations on radiations received by plants at the field scale and their spatial distribution. Simulations showed relatively high radiations received by crop fields, with field averages greater than 89%, and also rather homogeneous, with field standard deviations lower than 12%. Fields areas concerned by low levels of received radiations were quite limited, and, fields areas receiving slightly decreased radiations were higher in the tested configurations with higher concentrations of trackers. These results should be crossed with crop model in order to integrate all factors of crop growth and their temporal dynamic, and directly observe results of crop yields.