We will present at the AgriVoltaics World Conference 2026
Jorrit Becking will present the paper “Beyond the Silver Bullet: Why Agrivoltaic Projects Go Wrong and How a Structured Design Approach Can Fix It” at the 7th AgriVoltaics World Conference in New Delhi, held this year under the theme “Powering the Global South”.
Agricultural output is now a condition of the permit, the subsidy and the loan: France requires 90 % of a reference yield, Italy and Japan 80 %, Germany's DIN SPEC 91434 66 %. The paper traces four ways the usual PV-first approach fails, with documented cases from Asia and Europe:
- Agriculture as a permitting fiction: plants with no real farming underneath.
- PV constraints that break the farming system, such as greenhouse vents capped to protect electricity output.
- “Something growing” instead of a farming system, such as ornamental crops grown only to pass the yield test.
- Losses hidden in averages, with yields that swing widely between years.
Against this, it sets out an envelope-first design approach: define the agricultural performance envelope first, then the PV layouts that stay within it. It tests the approach against documented failures in Taiwan, France and Japan, and calls for published yield data and standardised crop-performance assessment in every permit.
