Preface: AgriVoltaics World Conference 2022

Abstract

In 2020, the AgriVoltaics conference was “launched” and the small community, working to develop innovative solutions to combine agricultural production and PV energy, met for the first time. It was great and surprising to see that this community was actually not so small; it was spread over all five continents, and united by the belief that agrivoltaics is perfectly suited to a sustainable energy transition. We all know that there is no one solution to suit all, and that we have a long road ahead to further understand and improve agrivoltaic systems. It is in this time, when sustainable solution are urgently needed, that our community must collaborate to accelerate the availability of sound agrivoltaic systems. Exchange of information and experiences was at the core of Agrivoltaics2021, where the importance of “connecting” agrivoltaics worldwide was highlighted, and despite it being held online it was a great success!

The growth of agrivoltaics is exponential, as indicated by the ever-increasing number of scientific publications on the topic, by the number of new agrivoltaic systems installed and last but not least, by the interest that large energy players and governments have paid to agrivoltaics. Our community now has a great opportunity, but also a responsibility to develop and bring forward true agrivoltaic systems where the production of PV electricity is necessarily coupled to agricultural production. While we work to optimise AV systems, we must also make sure that the policies supporting their implementation will prevent agrivoltaic projects from being abandoned, and becoming nothing more than ground mounted PV systems. This should be our concern when “bringing agrivoltaics forward”.

Bringing agrivoltaics forward was therefore the theme and focus of AgriVoltaics2022 Conference, and with 488 participants from 46 countries (and more than half on-site) it was a great success. The program embraced a broad spectrum of topics ranging from policy making, economics and social acceptance to technical and scientific aspects related to the modelling and validation of crop production under agrivoltaics and technological advances in agrivoltaic systems. The need for a sustainable integration of agrivoltaics systems into the landscape was also addressed in many presentations. In addition, a Sustainable Agrivoltaic Integration Challenge was organised and a Student Award was granted.

These proceedings provide a comprehensive overview of all the topics presented at AgriVoltaics2022 and are a testimony to the growing contribution that the international scientific community is making to bring agrivoltaics forward.

Stefano Amaducci

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Conference Chair AgriVoltaics2022