The agricultural solar PV potential was calculated using the GLAES tool, following the methodology first introduced by Reiberg, Robinius and Stolten in 2018 and later adopted by the European Commission, among others. This particular report builds on the authors’ previous work on ground-mounted solar PV potential mapping from 2021.
Spatial data for arable land, pasture land, fruit and berry plantations for the analyzed countries were obtained from the European Commission's Corine land cover dataset (2018 edition). Several exclusions were applied to take into account buffer zones around roads, railways, power lines, buildings, forests, water bodies and nature reserves. Maximum elevations and slopes were also set. In the authors' previous analysis and in the recent European Commission report, land used for ground-mounted PV was limited to low-quality soil areas only, but in the case of this report, no exclusions for soil classes were applied. As Agri-PV combines agriculture and electricity generation, it can also be applied in good quality soil areas, which should open up more possibilities. A full list of exclusion parameters can be found in the report PDF (following Ryberg, Robinius, and Stolten; Ember modified following Instrat, JRC, et al.).
After applying all exclusions, the program limited land available for agricultural solar PV to areas within 5 km from a grid connection point (high- to medium-voltage substation based on OpenStreetMap data), which is the distance proposed by solar PV project developers for medium-sized projects. Some studies suggest a distance of 10 km for larger solar plants (>10-20 MW), but at present, such cases are much less common for agricultural solar PV projects in Europe. An exception was made for Slovakia, due to the low quality of grid data and the very high number of exclusions resulting from the grid proximity criterion. The share of arable land available for agricultural solar PV in Slovakia was the average of the results from the other countries, then adjusted to take into account the overall smaller share of arable land in Slovakia’s total area compared to the Central European average.
The resulting areas were converted to installed capacities using values consistent with other calculations in the report: 0.3 MW/ha for spaced agricultural PV on arable land and pasture, and 0.7 MW/ha for overhead agricultural PV on fruit and berries. The results for arable land were further disaggregated based on the proportion of arable land occupied by different staple crops, in particular wheat, barley, oats and rye (Eurostat 2020 data).
