Agrivoltaic is the combination of two words, agriculture and photovoltaic that associating solar photovoltaic panels and crop at the same time on the same land area. Agrivoltaic system (AV) was proposed as an innovative solution to solve the competition of land around the years 2000s when many farmers in the US and Europe started to convert their land from food crop to energy crop production due to higher demand of biofuel energy. In Japan, AV became more popular after the introduction of Feed-in Tariff (FIT) scheme in July 2012. This scheme made mandatory for electric utility operator to buy electricity from renewable sources at fixed prices for 10 to 20 years depending on the installed capacity. Many rice farmers on the flat land are attracted to this scheme due to the potential of increasing their income. However, MAFF has enacted a guideline to ensure that crop yield under AV should not decrease more than by 20% when compared to the crop yield in the same area. If so, the AV would be dismantled, and the land should return to purely agriculture activities. Throughout the literature review up to date, it is understood that accumulation of empirical research on AV is very limited in Japan. Although there are numerous research examples on the influence of insufficient solar radiation on the crop growth, field experiment coupled with modelling study are still lacking. In addition, there are only limited studies which examined the influence of partial shading from solar photovoltaic panels on the rice (shade intolerant) in Japan. Most of the previous studies in AV focused on lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and maize (shade tolerant). The principal objective of this study is to investigate the effect of rice yield cultivated in an irrigated field under AV in Japan. Then through the use of modelling approaches to simulate solar radiation under AV and its effect on rice yield, the optimum distribution of solar radiation between solar panels and rice crop by adjusting the tilt angle to maximize the monetary income to the AV farm.
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