System design and components integration - Brendon Bingwa

System Design and Components Integration Team

In general, our team deals with the integration of various technologies and electric power generation systems into agrivoltaic systems and the agricultural value chain. In addition, the team focuses on agrivoltaics mounting structure design, PV greenhouse design and heating and cooling demands for buildings on agricultural land and for agricultural processes.

Methodology

We use a range of tools to design and simulate the performance of hybrid renewable energy systems centered on the agrivoltaics approach. This includes technologies such as wind turbines, hydrogen production (electrolyzer, tank and fuel cell), hydroelectric turbines, energy storage, backup generators, solar thermal collectors and heat pumps.

For the design of mounting structures for agrivoltaics and PV greenhouses, we benefit from our vast experience in design, implementation and research of agrivoltaics projects across the globe to provide preliminary designs suited to the regional and site-specific techno-economic and climatic conditions. We focus on key aspects such as mounting structure configuration, support structure and foundation type and placement. The use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to model the effects of turbulent wind flow on the microclimate in agrivoltaic systems allows us to optimize the system design to mitigate potential negative wind flow.

Our services aim to provide cost-effective mounting structure designs and integrate technologies that add value to agrivoltaic systems and along the agricultural value-chain:

• Technology screening, technology selection and performance simulation: Electric power generation systems and technologies best suited are identified and integrated into the agrivoltaic system. Performance simulations are conducted to estimate the expected output of the hybrid system.
• By quantifying heating and cooling demands along the agricultural value-chain and subsequently providing and analyzing potential solutions to efficiently meet these demands, we aim to optimize the energy production and utilization from agrivoltaic systems installed on farm-sites.
• Design tools are used to provide preliminary agrivoltaics and PV greenhouse mounting structure designs that can be further developed by a solar EPC company.
• CFD: By conducting CFD analysis we aim to optimize the preliminary designs, improve efficiency, and predict the performance of systems prior to installation.

Find out more about the diverse services of our group agrivoltiacs at Fraunhofer ISE.