Agrivoltaics in Application: Prove Your Concept

Why the need for Agrivoltaic Modeling?

The Problem

Land use is a serious problem worldwide. Solar developments and agriculture often compete for the same land. But what if they could integrate? Introducing agrivoltaics, the dual use of land for solar energy generation and agricultural activities.

Sounds great, right? The problem. Proving it works.

Introducing Spade Agrivoltaics

Spade Agrivoltaics originated as an idea to inform decisions upon dual-use solar systems, co-locating photovoltaic production within the agricultural industry. We identified the primary barrier to these systems, proof of concept. Installing and developing solar projects within the agricultural industry is time and resource-intensive. Additionally, this novel approach is still in its infancy, and many projects struggle to make it past the planning stage. This is where Spade can help. Use our tool to simulate how solar arrays impact the agricultural environment, all before breaking ground!

Successful Applications

To date, Spade Agrivoltaics has completed varying levels of site analysis for the agricultural industry. Projects have spanned across microgrid and pilot project research, to photovoltaic greenhouse analysis, and even utility-scale agrivoltaic developments! Spade Agrivoltaics provides unique insight into cropping, forage, and agricultural production methods. Light analysis is accompanied by custom climate data, energy production data, and examination of several solar array configurations. Our software has limitless applications, if you have an innovative agrivoltaic idea, we can use our expertise to prove your concept!

What Powers Spade?

Spade agrivoltaics started as an idea from one of Colorado's experts in agrivoltaics, Sandbox Solar. A partnership with Ladybug Tools helped develop the current version of Spade Agrivoltaics! Powered through Ladybug Tools' Honeybee application that uses Grasshopper to analyze and run a computer-aided design (CAD) application, Rhinoceros. The Spade script is a generative algorithm that allows for seamless manipulation of the model space. Honeybee creates, runs, and visualizes the results of daylight and radiation simulations using Radiance (Ward & Shakespeare, 1998) and energy models using EnergyPlus (USDOE, 2017) and OpenStudio (2008).

What's Next?

Ready to explore agrivoltaics? Try the Spade Beta app today! Or reach out to us for expanded capabilities. We are your experts and are here to assist in the entire project process. Use Spade to explore your agrivoltaic ideas — your idea might just be the next big leap in dual-use solar!