Conversion of photosynthetically inactive solar radiation into electric power for enhanced agrivoltaic applications

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The world's population is expected to increase to 9.8 billion by 2050, which will require significant increases in global energy and agricultural production, placing stress on land availability. Furthermore, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have surpassed 400 ppm and increasing energy demands must be met with renewable sources, such as photovoltaics (PV), rather than energy derived from burning fossil fuels. In this regard, competition for land can be reduced through agrivoltaics, whereby land is co-developed for both PV and agricultural production. In conventional agrivoltaic farms crops are grown adjacent to PV panels and their overall exposure to sunlight is reduced. A common strategy in agrivoltaic systems is to grow shade-tolerant crops, such as lettuce. In this project, we will fabricate a semi-transparent PV module that splits the solar irradiance into its photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and photosynthetically inactive radiation (non-PAR) spectra. This semi-transparent PV module is comprised of a luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) that absorbs non-PAR and re-emits light to PV cells located at its sidewalls while transmitting PAR to underlying crops. The objective is to develop semi-transparent PV panels that will be used in the construction of greenhouses for agrivoltaic applications. The LSCs developed in this work will be an innovative advancement for the design of agrovoltaic systems because they will remove the limitation that crops must be shade-tolerant. This will provide SolarGrid Energy Inc. with a competitive edge in the expanding agrivoltaics market place. This advancement in agrivoltaics technology will directly benefit Canada, which has over 80 million acres of crop land.