Design and Analysis of Agrivoltaics on Tea Garden: A Case Study in Bangladesh

Dual usage of land for crops and photovoltaics (PV) energy production in form of agrivoltaics (AV) systems is a promising path towards sustainable growth. Tea, for example, is a typical low-light plant, and can be integrated under solar panel arrays. In this paper, we present a detailed design strategy for PV array with relevant shading constraint for optimal tea production. Our measurements show that tea plantations maintain 60-70% shading at various hill orientations. To achieve the required shading, we considered panel tilt, pole height, and spacing between panel arrays as the major design parameters. Through numerical modeling and analysis assuming 1.66m wide rows of panels, we find that to achieve the shading constraint: panels should be parallel to the hill slope, pole height is 3m, and pole-to-pole spacings are 2.37 to 2.75m for different hill orientations. While we find the designs to be profitable, the LCOEs of the PV systems on north facing hills are high and may become unviable if the tariff rate goes below the assumed 9.45 BDT/kWh value.