Agri-Horti-PV Research System in North Rhine-Westphalia Including PV Trackers and Integrated Rainwater Harvesting

Abstract

We present a new Agri-Horti-PV system installed at the end of 2021 in the brown coal area of North Rhine-Westphalia near Jülich, Germany. The system contains different PV installations: Standard south oriented PV modules with a rainwater harvesting set up and east-west tracker modules, of which one is equipped with a rainwater harvesting setup. For the investigation of plant growth under the PV panels and on the reference areas without PV installations a novel rail system allowing for automatic camera movement is integrated in the Agri-Horti-PV park. Using the camera setup plant growth measurements with high spatio-temporal resolution will be possible. The scientific investigations of crop growth and the influence of variable shading conditions controlled by the tracking system started in the growth season of 2022. Here we present the technical details of the system as well as first results of an experiment carried out with faba beans, assessing impact of the Horti-PV system on growth dynamics and leaf morphology.