DEVELOPMENT OF A MODEL OF COMBINATION OF SOLAR CONCENTRATORS AND AGRICULTURAL FIELDS

Abstract

We have developed several prototypes of solar concentrators that are compact, light, and inexpensive. As an example of solar concentrators, we selected parabolic solar concentrators with plane mirrors that approximate the parabolic surface. The green energy is very important in modern world because of global climate change, which has caused disproportion in the ecological balance, population growth rates, an increase in demand for food and electricity against the backdrop of a decrease in arable land. They are now the main challenges to the development of agriculture and ensuring sustainable food security of many countries. In this paper, as one of the ways to address these challenges, the problems of combining crops with agrivoltaics are studied using the example of two countries – Mexico and Azerbaijan. The economy of both countries is based on oil production, relief and climate have many common features, which are expressed particularly in the abundance of solar radiation, the predominance of mountainous regions with remote and hard-to-reach settlements that need to create autonomous life support systems. A methodology is proposed for the evaluation of the impact of combinations of solar concentrators together with certain agricultural crops. The proposed mathematical model is simple and applicable for different cases of combination of solar concentrators and agricultural fields. The main problem for proposed solar concentrators is the automatization of the assembly process of these solar concentrators. We proposed two methods of assembly that is, using a parabolic rule and using a robotic arm with a stereoscopic vision system. Both methods are described in this article. The simulation of these processes was made with using software of SolidWorks