Integration of Photovoltaic Thermal Technology in the Greenhouses (A case study of Greece and Portugal)

Abstract: The thesis work was done as a part of the company's proposal writing work for the Horizon Europe projects, which is the European Union's key funding program for research and innovation with a budget of €95.5 billion. The budget for this project call was €5 million and aimed towards demonstrating the possibilities of Photovoltaic thermal technologies (PVT), which will produce heat and electricity at the same time on agricultural land to combat climate change. The initial stage of the project, which the thesis work corresponds to, consists of the concept of implementing the objectives of the call and demonstrating how it could be achieved by forming a consortium of different companies, allocating the sites, possible applications of the PVT technology, understanding the plants which can grow in the relevant climate conditions under the shading of the panels. There are different companies who participate in the project call and, if they succeed, are liable to demonstrate the objectives of the call under the allocated budget and share the results with the European Union. The thesis work tried to focus on the company's objective for the call, which was to find out the suitable crops to be planted under the integrated PVT greenhouses, details on the weather conditions and applications of heat and electricity on the demonstration sites, i.e., Greece and Portugal. The emphasis was also given to creating a business canvas model and doing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis to make a business plan for this project. In this project, an Absolicon X10 PVT collector has been proposed with thermal heat up to 75 ºC and electricity at 230V. The outcomes also showed that each PVT collector integrated into the greenhouse could produce 4.73 MWh/year of thermal energy and can supply 2.2 MWh/year of electrical energy, which can save up to 0.48 tons/year of oil equivalent and avoid 37.6 tons of CO2 emissions during its lifetime of 25 years compared to burning oil. Considering the weather conditions in Greece and Portugal and to make sure the plants do not need much shading, tomatoes, barley and cacao seeds were identified as the potential crops to be planted in the PVT-integrated greenhouses.