Economic Feasibility of Agrivoltaic Systems in Food-Energy Nexus Context: Modelling and a Case Study in Niger
- In the literature, many studies outline the advantages of agrivoltaic (APV) systems from different viewpoints: optimized land use, productivity gain in both the energy and water sector, economic benefits, etc. A holistic analysis of an APV system is needed to understand its full advantages. For this purpose, a case study farm size of 0.15 ha has been chosen as a reference farm at a village in Niger, West Africa. Altogether four farming cases are considered. They are traditional rain-fed, irrigated with diesel-powered pumps, irrigated with solar pumps, and the APV system. The APV system is further analyzed under two scenarios: benefits to investors and combined benefits to investors and farmers. An economic feasibility analysis model is developed. Different economic indicators are used to present the results: gross margin, farm profit, benefit-cost ratio, and net present value (NPV). All the economic indicators obtained for the solar-powered irrigation system were positive, whereas all those for the diesel-powered system were negative. Additionally, the diesel system will emit annually about 4005 kg CO2 to irrigate the chosen reference farm. The land equivalent ratio (LER) was obtained at 1.33 and 1.13 for two cases of shading-induced yield loss excluded and included, respectively.
Author: | Srijana Neupane Bhandari, Sabine Schlüter, Wilhelm Kuckshinrichs, Holger Schlör, Rabani Adamou, Ramchandra Bhandari |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:832-epub4-18277 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11101906 |
ISSN: | 2073-4395 |
Parent Title (English): | Agronomy |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Editor: | Miguel-Ángel Muñoz-García |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first Publication: | 2021/09/23 |
Date of Publication (online): | 2021/11/11 |
GND-Keyword: | Bewässerung; Sonnenenergie |
Tag: | Agrivoltaic; Benefit-Cost Ratio; Food-Energy Nexus; Land Equivalent Ratio; Solar-Powered Irrigation |
Volume: | 11 |
Issue: | 10 |
Article Number: | 1906 |
Page Number: | 22 |
Institutes: | Fakultät für Raumentwicklung und Infrastruktursysteme (F12) / Fakultät 12 / Institut für Technologie und Ressourcenmanagement in den Tropen und Subtropen |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 600 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften |
Open Access: | Open Access |
DeepGreen: | DeepGreen |
Licence (German): | Creative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |