Agrivoltaics for arid climates: Developments, technological trends, and global data-driven technoeconomic assessments

Agrivoltaics (APV) has emerged as a promising land-use strategy to address acute Food-Energy-Water (FEW) security challenges in arid and semi-arid regions that also represent the world's fastest-growing solar markets. This review critically assesses the current state of APV in arid and semi-arid regions by synthesizing evidence from various studies encompassing pilot projects, field experiments, modelling analysis, and commercial installations worldwide. The analysis covers APV system architectures, shading strategies, land-use efficiency, and performance trade-offs across fixed-tilt, tracking, and vertical configurations. In parallel, modelling approaches spanning irradiance, microclimate, crop growth, and photovoltaic yield are reviewed, highlighting key limitations in current integrated APV simulation frameworks. A dedicated market survey further examines emerging PV module technologies tailored for APV applications, including bifacial, semi-transparent, and spectrally selective designs. Moving beyond a conventional literature review, a data-driven global techno-economic assessment of APV potential is also performed for arid and semi-arid regions identified using Koppen-Geiger climatic classification and global cultivated-land datasets. The modeled APV capacity across cultivated arid lands is estimated at 139-231 TWp and even a conservative 1% deployment (similar to 4.6 M km(2)) could deliver 1.3-2.3 TWp, highlighting the scalability of APV under minimal land-use transformation. Two illustrative crop case studies (tomato and lettuce) further demonstrate enhanced combined energy and agricultural revenues under water-constrained conditions. Land value density assessment shows that APV systems enhance land value up to 7 times over conventional standalone agriculture in arid regions. Overall, this work positions APV as a scalable, climate-adaptive infrastructure for advancing renewable energy, agricultural resilience, and water sustainability in arid regions.