Cover Story

With appropriate policy support and investment incentives, agrivoltaics could play a crucial role in Africa’s green energy transition, writes Dr Richard Randle-Boggis of the University of Sheffield.

Many companies working in the Australian utility-scale solar sector are exploring opportunities to integrate agricultural production into projects, writes Lucinda Tonge, a senior policy officer at the Clean Energy Council.

With France’s rooftop and ground-mount solar tenders featuring a sub-family for agrivoltaics, Xavier Daval of France Agrivoltaïsme details routes to market for new projects.

To make agrivoltaics a widely available option for developers in the US, questions about cost, liability and other business, legal and regulatory issues need to be addressed, writes Michele Boyd of the US Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office.

Max Trommsdorff of Fraunhofer ISE and Jens Vollprecht, a lawyer at Becker Büttner Held, detail the legal aspects of agrivoltaics deployment in Germany.

Combining solar plants with agriculture is becoming more prevalent in markets globally, increasing the availability of sites for new PV projects while reducing land-use conflicts. Will Norman details how the industry can take advantage of agrivoltaic opportunities while navigating construction, operation and maintenance challenges.

Europe is home to relatively low solar manufacturing capacities, with just 3% of global module supply in 2020. However, with industry players offering low-carbon products manufactured under robust labour regulations and without the cost of overseas shipping, Europe’s PV manufacturing industry finds itself in a very timely position to ramp up, writes Johan Lindahl, secretary general of the European Solar Manufacturing Council.

Amid potential supply chain bottlenecks as China increases its PV manufacturing dominance, companies in markets such as the US, India and Europe are looking to leverage new policy support to scale up domestic production. Jules Scully charts the industry’s efforts to onshore solar module manufacturing.

The proliferation of solar requires PV projects to adapt to their grid surroundings, which increasingly entails connecting alongside adjacent technologies, be it energy storage, other renewables or green hydrogen. Amid the growing threat of curtailment, Jules Scully looks at the rise of the ‘solar-plus’ market and the financial models underpinning it.

The solar industry’s manufacturing footprint, and indeed the projects themselves, are becoming ever larger, with more panels and other associated equipment being packaged and shipped globally. Now, as Emilie Oxel O’Leary, CEO at Green Clean Solar explains, the industry is getting serious on its end of life obligations and establishing a true circular economy.