Economic indicators evaluation to study the feasibility of a solar agriculture farm: A case study

•Renewable energy power generation primarily solar energy is increasing to reduce the carbon foot prints .•Solar photovoltaic plant needs enormous amount of land that will enhance the competition of land for the crop cultivation.•Agrovoltaic approach (APV), which enables solar photovoltaic power generation and agricultural operations on the same land by providing elevated structures for solar panel accommodation for power generation and the capability for agriculture operations to be carried out on the ground beneath the solar panels.•This approach needs to study from the economic point of view to find out the success of this idea.•In this research paper economic parameters relevant to agriculture and the solar power plant is studied.•Economic comparison of ground mounted solar power plant and solar agriculture farm of same capacity is studied. The 209 kWp solar agricultural farm at Dayalbagh Educational Institute's Dairy Campus in Agra, India, is the subject of this economic analysis. This study analyzes economic indicators relevant to agriculture food production, such as gross financial margins, farm profits, and cost-benefit ratios. Other measured variables include NPV (net present value), PB (payback period), and LCOE (levelized cost of electricity) of solar power generation to determine the economic viability of this agrivoltaics (production of solar energy and agriculture on the same land) APV project. Farm profit and gross financial margins both are positive values of 161, 907 INR (Indian Rupees) and 316, 907 INR, respectively. The cost-benefit ratio was 1.5.The economic factors of solar energy generation were studied for two systems: surface-mounted or ground-mounted solar systems and an elevated solar system with agriculture production on the same ground (APV or agrivoltaics). Both systems had the same production capacity. Two different hypothetical situations were used for each system. In the first situation (Case Study A), the assumption was that solar power performance would remain constant during operation. In the second situation (Case Study B), the assumption was that annual performance would be reduced by 0.5 %.The results show that APV is better than the surface-mounted system because there is no significant difference between the payback periods of APV and surface-mounted systems; the NPV of APV is greater than the surface-mounted solar system for both the study case A and case B and the LCOE of APV is 55 % less than the LCOE of the surfa