2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Achieving the Net Zero Emissions scenario by 2050 requires more solar energy production — but it must not be at a cost to traditional agricultural land uses. We report an innovative photovoltaic configuration to optimize solar energy generation in agricultural settings without compromising or competing with agricultural production (also known as Agrivoltaics). It indeed enhances the outcome quality of agricultural production. Polymer-based greenhouse structures (or solar domes) are typically part of the agricultural ecosystems, especially for those economically important crops in Oregon state, such as potatoes, corns and tomatoes – which may need cultivating at an optimum condition (usually moderately high temperature, low relative humidity, well-drained soil and moderately high sunlight intensity) for the crops to achieve their premium market qualities. The greenhouse structures function as the cultivating place of the crops with maintained conditions (within a range of temperature, humidity, soil condition and sunlight intensity), relying on solar energy and radiation through the transparent polymer dome structures. Our AGRO-PV Dome concept integrates this existing dome structure (with the most powerful (highest efficiency) form of the solar cell technology, which is the monocrystalline silicon solar cells. This will increase solar energy production, which could in turn, be used directly for the agricultural uses of the overall farm, or for other energy uses in the complex, without taking any additional land/space for agricultural purposes – it simply uses the space occupied already by the existing solar dome structures. The key enabling technology here is the light-weight PC-PC based mono-crystalline silicon solar cell mini modules – which is a technology that our group had developed previously in the lab scales, as has been reported widely in the literature. This represents a form of the dual-use farming concept which could be a promising solution to the combined increase in demand for solar energy with the agricultural use of the land. In this report, we document the building of the AGRO-PV Dome prototype that would demonstrate the efficacy of the concept and the promise for scaling it into large-scale standard photovoltaics structures that meet the demand for flexibility, modularity, scalability, minimum land occupation, mechanical performance, and that can be deployed in farms without hindering crops growth and farmer activities. This concept is an opportunity for developing new PV configurations that use off-the-shelf materials to optimize solar energy generation in agricultural settings without compromising or competing with agricultural production. AGRO-PV Dome project was a Final Senior Capstone Design assignment conducted by multidisciplinary students from Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Renewable Energy Engineering, Biological Science and Business/Management departments in Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT). It had recently won the Oregon Tech IDEAFEST 2024 Award in June 2024, as well as a research project supported by the OR State Legislature through the Oregon Renewable Energy Center (OREC). OIT has been known very its hands on, integrated (multidisciplinary approach) engineering program - and it was reflected well in this AGRO-PV Dome project.