Presentation Details
| Crop-Based Agrivoltaics in the U.S.Southwest: A Special Opportunity for Water-Resilient Agriculture Hossein Ashrafpour, Andrew Silverstein, Sarah Kurtz. Environmental System, School of Engineering, University of California Merced, Merced, CA, USA |
Abstract
Water scarcity and irrigation constraints are increasingly limiting agricultural production in the western United States, where many high-value cropping systems rely heavily on managed water supplies. Crop-based agrivoltaic systems, which co-locate crops beneath elevated photovoltaic (PV) arrays, offer a dual-use strategy to enhance agricultural water resilience and enable renewable energy generation. While agrivoltaics in the United States have largely focused on livestock grazing or pollinator habitat, crop-oriented applications remain underexplored, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. This study develops a special Crop-Based Agrivoltaic Opportunity framework that integrates three key indicators relevant to water-limited agriculture: extreme heat exposure, growing-season precipitation, and solar irradiance. Long-term climate data (1991–2020) are used to define frost-free growing seasons, quantify precipitation availability, and assess temperature extremes. Solar resource potential is derived from typical-year irradiance datasets. Each indicator is normalized and combined to identify regions where agrivoltaic systems may provide the greatest combined agricultural and energy benefits. Results reveal pronounced opportunity hotspots across the U.S. Southwest, including California’s Central Valley, southern California, western and southern Arizona, parts of New Mexico, and western Texas. These regions are characterized by persistent aridity, high irrigation dependence, and strong solar resources, conditions under which PV shading may reduce crop heat stress and evapotranspiration while supporting substantial energy production. The findings demonstrate that water-limited agricultural systems in the western United States represent a special opportunity for crop-based agrivoltaics to support water-resilient agriculture. This special framework provides a scalable approach for identifying priority regions for agrivoltaic deployment and informs integrated agricultural and energy planning under increasing water constraints.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
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