Agrivoltaic projects combine agricultural production and photovoltaic energy generation within the same space, creating design, assessment, and decision-making challenges that differ fundamentally from those of conventional PV systems.
LuciSun supports agrivoltaic developers, asset owners, public authorities, and research stakeholders through dedicated technical advisory and modelling services, aimed at evaluating the feasibility, performance, and robustness of agrivoltaic concepts under real project constraints.
LuciSun provides high-end technical advisory services for agrivoltaic projects, covering feasibility studies, comparative design assessments, and support for permitting, financing, and technical decision-making. These services are delivered through dedicated simulation studies carried out by LuciSun experts, using LuSim as a core modelling tool to address the specific challenges of agrivoltaic systems.
Agrivoltaic projects differ fundamentally from standard photovoltaic installations. Their performance cannot be assessed solely on the basis of annual PV energy yield. Light availability at crop level, its spatial distribution, seasonal dynamics, and long-term interactions between agricultural production and energy generation all play a central role and must be assessed explicitly.
These services are applied across different regulatory and project contexts, including agrivoltaic projects developed in France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, as well as in other international contexts.
In agrivoltaic systems, the relevant quantity is not only the total amount of light reaching the ground, but its spatial and temporal distribution under the PV structures. Local deficits, excesses, or strong heterogeneity can have a direct impact on crop development and agronomic outcomes.
LuciSun studies therefore focus on quantifying light distribution explicitly in space and time, rather than relying on uniform reduction factors or average correction coefficients.
LuSim evaluates direct, diffuse, and reflected irradiance components consistently in three dimensions, making it possible to capture partial sky visibility, ground interactions, and structural shading effects that are intrinsic to agrivoltaic layouts.
In open field agrivoltaic systems, typically associated with cereal crops and other large scale annual cultures, PV structures must coexist with agricultural machinery and seasonal crop sensitivity. Depending on the design, this may involve vertical PV rows or elevated structures with wide spacing.
The key questions addressed in LuciSun studies concern the spatial distribution of light at ground level, the uniformity of exposure across cultivated areas, and the trade offs between installed capacity, energy production, and crop relevant light metrics.
LuSim enables systematic comparison of alternative layouts under identical physical assumptions, supporting objective assessment of how design choices influence both energy production and light availability.
For perennial crops such as vineyards and orchards, agrivoltaic systems are typically based on elevated overhead structures installed above crop rows. These configurations are often driven by combined objectives of energy production and crop protection against excessive radiation or extreme weather. The modelling challenge lies in capturing strong vertical light gradients, partial shading of complex canopies, and pronounced seasonal effects over long investment horizons.
LuciSun delivers spatially and temporally resolved light assessments at canopy level, supporting comparative analysis of structural height, spacing, and orientation, and providing physically consistent inputs for agronomic evaluation.
Greenhouses and semi closed agrivoltaic systems introduce a different set of constraints related to enclosure, roof transmissivity, and the balance between direct and diffuse light. In these cases, simplified outdoor assumptions are no longer valid. LuciSun uses LuSim to assess irradiance distribution under complex envelopes, accounting explicitly for shading, reflections, and material properties. These studies support the comparison of alternative covering strategies and their implications for both energy generation and internal light conditions.
Pasture based and grazing agrivoltaic systems rely on elevated PV structures with large spacing, where the objective is to maintain acceptable light availability and accessibility over time rather than maximising instantaneous yield.
The dominant questions concern the temporal evolution of shading patterns, seasonal variability, and the robustness of layouts under different operating conditions.
LuciSun studies focus on identifying limiting periods and spatial constraints that influence system performance.
Depending on the project context, LuciSun studies can include agronomically relevant light indicators such as photosynthetically active radiation and daily light integral, derived consistently from the simulated irradiance fields. These indicators are not treated as simplified proxies, but are computed from the same spatially and temporally resolved light distributions used for the photovoltaic assessment.
Agrivoltaic assessment often requires coupling detailed light modelling with crop growth and yield models. This need is addressed through the integration between LuSim and PASE, developed in collaboration with the University of Liège. PASE is an open source framework targeting the simulation of agrivoltaic systems by combining photovoltaic energy modelling with crop evaluation.
PASE relies on established models and libraries for crops modelling, including STICS, SIMPLE or Gras-Sim, and implements a modelling chain where the irradiance reaching both the PV system and the crop level is used as input for crop growth and yield evaluation. Within this combined workflow, LuSim contributes high resolution three dimensional irradiance modelling in complex agrivoltaic scenes, while PASE provides the agronomic modelling layer.
The separation of roles between high resolution irradiance modelling and agronomic evaluation allows each part of the modelling chain to remain traceable and scientifically grounded. This approach has been applied and validated in the context of collaborative research projects, including SYMBIOSYST, a European research project, where LuSim was used for high resolution assessments of irradiance distribution across photovoltaic modules, crop canopies, and ground surfaces in agrivoltaic demonstrators.
Agrivoltaic systems often involve bifacial photovoltaic modules, whose performance depends on both incident irradiance and reflected light from the ground and surrounding surfaces. LuSim explicitly captures these interactions, allowing bifacial gains to be evaluated consistently alongside crop level light availability. This enables assessment of trade offs between energy production, structural design, and ground treatment strategies.
Across all agrivoltaic configurations, LuciSun relies on LuSim to perform consistent three dimensional, time resolved simulations that support comparative design studies and systematic exploration of options. The results are not limited to aggregated indicators, but include spatially resolved outputs that reveal heterogeneity and local constraints.
The outcomes of LuciSun’s agrivoltaic services typically include comparative performance assessments of alternative layouts, quantification of trade offs between energy production and light availability, and inputs for uncertainty and risk analysis. These results are used to support technical decision making, stakeholder discussions, and bankability assessments in contexts where simplified modelling approaches are insufficient.
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