REVIEW article
Front. Hortic.
Sec. Viticulture, Pomology, and Soft Fruits
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Agrivoltaics: Balancing Crop Production and Solar Energy for Sustainable AgricultureView all 3 articles
Optimizing Agrivoltaic Systems for Global Sustainability: A Comprehensive Review of Design, Multi-objective Performance, and Structural Resilience Under Wind Dynamics
Provisionally accepted
- Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, United States
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Agrivoltaics (AV) represents a profoundly efficient and innovative hybrid technology at the critical intersection of global food and energy security. This comprehensive review synthesizes recent research, underscoring AV's transformative potential to address escalating demands for food and energy while mitigating land-use conflicts and climate change impacts. Key insights reveal that AV systems optimize land productivity, profoundly modulate microclimates, and significantly conserve water resources, fostering enhanced agricultural resilience and diversified crop production. Moreover, they deliver substantial economic advantages to farmers, ensuring stable income streams and boosting profitability, alongside contributing considerable clean energy generation. The exponential growth in agrivoltaics research reflects its escalating recognition as a multifaceted and vital solution. Despite these compelling benefits, widespread adoption encounters notable challenges. These include overcoming high initial capital costs, optimizing intricate technical configurations to balance light and shade, navigating complex socio-political landscapes, and establishing robust waste management and recycling frameworks for PV modules. Crucially, significant structural engineering challenges arise from high-intensity wind loads, exacerbated by a critical lack of comprehensive design standards, where existing codes often misestimate loads, and traditional wind tunnel testing frequently underestimates peak pressures. Addressing these requires advanced methodologies like open-jet testing, sophisticated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations, and the consistent peak load estimation method to ensure structural resilience and economic viability. Future advancements are critical for unlocking AV's full potential, necessitating deeper integration of cutting-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things for dynamic control and predictive analytics. Focused efforts are also required for refining modeling tools, creating comprehensive data repositories, and developing flexible policy instruments. Ultimately, fostering cross-sector collaboration and implementing tailored, holistic approaches will be paramount to building more resilient, sustainable, and economically viable agricultural and energy sectors worldwide.
Keywords: Agrivoltaics, Solar Energy, dual land use, microclimate modulation, water conservation, structural engineering, Wind load analysis, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
Received: 31 Jul 2025; Accepted: 26 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Aly. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Aly Mousaad Aly
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.