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The European Commission will publish guidance on agrivoltaics as part of a wider document covering innovative technologies, attendees at pv magazine Roundtables Europe 2024 heard. More than 1,300 guests joined pv magazine’s live event on Dec. 5, which covered topics ranging from quality and European manufacturing to energy storage and solar cell technology.
The European Commission will issue agrivoltaics guidance to EU member states during its current legislative session, pv magazine Roundtables Europe 2024 attendees were told, covering regulatory and financial aspects of deployment.
Speaking at the live event, Ignacio Asenjo, policy officer at the European Commission, shared an update on how long-anticipated guidance on agrivoltaics is progressing. The executive arm of the European Union was initially expected to publish its agrivoltaics guidance in 2024.
Asenjo said the European Commission’s was committed to producing guidance on deployment methods such as agrivoltaics under its previous mandate, but this was expanded in 2024 to include a broader range of technologies.
“The reasoning goes that we need all forms of deployment possible for renewables,” Asenjo told Roundtables Europe viewers. “The traditional ones such as ground-based PV or rooftop PV, but also wind, onshore and offshore. We also need to think about other forms of deployment taking advantage of the modularity of PV, and so we think about agri-PV, but also we think about building-integrated PV, infrastructure-integrated PV, floating PV etc.”
Asenjo acknowledged that project developers have experienced “complexities” due to existing regulations when developing agrivoltaics projects in the European Union, but suggested guidance could result in improvements in the near future.
“It was decided not to issue this guidance in the previous mandate but will certainly be the case in this new commission and I hope that in the next few months, and in 2025, we will start really making progress,” he said.
New rules
Industry experts from key European agrivoltaics markets also shared their views on the regulatory landscape during the digital event.
Italy has taken major steps on agrivoltaics in 2024, first by introducing new technical specifications, then by allocating 1.5 GW of capacity in its first agrivoltaics tender.
Oltis Dallto, agri PV manager at Juwi Energie Rinnovabili, told Roundtables attendees that Italy’s regulations, in combination with the tender for agrivoltaics, could be a “game changer” from a technology perspective.
“There will be 1,370 MW of big-scale agri-PV projects that are obliged to use high elevated structures,” said Dallto. “The Italian agri-PV projects will for sure change the way agri-PV projects are constructed.”
Animal farm
Angela Heinssen, CEO of law practice Kanzlei an der Lühe, provided an overview of the latest update to agrivoltaics regulations in Germany. German regulations on agrivoltaics include a technical standard introduced in 2021, which sets out a range criteria on issues such as farming yield and land loss, and a 2024 update focusing on livestock.
Heinssen sat on the consortium which defined the 2024 regulations for agrivoltaics with animal husbandry. The lawyer noted that it took more than a year to find a “clear and good definition” for agrivoltaics in a livestock context. Issues tackled by the new standard include rules on the number of animals placed in a pen, a minimum clearance height for solar installed above poultry, and the impact of shading on animal behavior.
A feed-in tariff for small farmers – those deploying agrivoltaics on sites of 2.5 hectares or less – was also highlighted as an important addition to German regulations.
Losing trust
Whether farmers are able to take advantage of such feed-in tariffs remains to be seen, however, as agrivoltaics consultant Constantin Klyk explained to the Roundtables Europe audience.
“This is one update that had happened this year in Germany with [Solar Package 1 legislation] and there is a special feed-in tariff for agri-PV – so special auctions, special feed-in tariff for small projects, but also for bigger projects,” Klyk said. “Now the situation is, let’s say a little bit difficult at the moment. There are many companies, many farmers, just a lot of stakeholders waiting for EU approval. We still don’t have EU approval for these additional compensations, and this has been going for more than half a year now.
“I feel in the whole area of agri-PV in Germany that the stakeholders are slowly losing trust that it’s going to come.”
Local politics
Emilien Simonot, head of agrivoltaics at Lightsource bp, explained how the views of municipal governments can also have an influence on deployment.
“For instance, in a country like Germany or the Netherlands, municipalities have quite a lot of power,” said Simonot. “In France it’s a committee at provincial level that’s ruling on whether a project fits with the agri-PV regulation or not.”
Simonot added that developers must also consider the increasing volume of guidance from stakeholders such as farmers associations, and suggested too much variation in agrivoltaics regulation risks eliminating the qualities that make PV competitive.
“On the one side, all those measures and how they land at such a granular level is good, because I think it’s been highlighted, agri-PV has to adapt to the territory. It has to adapt to the agriculture and that is something that we understand as a developer, said Simonot.
“On the other side, it poses the question on the modularity and how we can make the most of this big PV force, being modular, being low cost, being replicable. How do we adapt that to agri-PV?”
Technical solutions
Manufacturers also shared their views on agrivoltaics at pv magazine Roundtables Europe, with presentations from Huasun and Huawei during the session.
Christian Comes, director of business development at Huasun, presented on cost and power generation profile of different types of agrivoltaics installation, while also teasing a semi-transparent product that the module maker is preparing to bring to market with a French partner in 2025.
Meanwhile Guluma Megersa, senior business development and solution manager at Huawei Technologies Deutschland, explored the demands agrivoltaics installations can put on inverters, including the need for strong safety features and multiple MPPT inputs to handle flexible plant layouts. |
