The world's population is continually growing, which means that in the next few decades, we will face numerous challenges, including the constant increase in food demand and energy requirements.

Since energy production and crop production both require extensive land usage there is competition between them. To address this challenge, one solution is to combine these two purposes by installing PV panels on cultivated fields. This approach allows us to utilize the same land for two distinct purposes, effectively doubling soil efficiency. Additionally, this system has the potential to act as a physical shield for crops, protecting them from heavy rains, hail, wind, and excessive heat that might ruin the crops and reduce noticeably their growth efficiency. An agrivoltaic system is capable in offering protection to the crops for all these phenomena, boosting their production.[1][2] It also offers the opportunity to implement a water recovery system in the plant to reuse water for irrigation. Finally, since agriculture requires a lot of energy, especially in greenhouses for heating processes, this technology could help to establish an energy self-sustainable system, reducing emissions and helping rural farmers by decreasing their dependence on the grid.

While silicon-based solar panels is the technology currently used in agrivoltaics [3], DSSCs are an emerging technology [4] for this application and offer distinct advantages. DSSCs have a lower efficiency compared to Silicon PV but they can be semitransparent and can absorb, to produce energy, the portion of the solar spectrum useless for plants and let pass through the wavelengths used for photosynthesis. Since different plants absorb different wavelengths, a dye used in DSSC can be designed according to the plant and further increase the system efficiency. Another advantage is using a dye that absorb the IR radiation, this way it is possible to protect the plants from these radiations that can cause excessive heat and eventually reduce their growth yield.

Finally, the last advantage that can lead us through a more sustainable future is, as some studies show, the possibility to reduce the use of fungicide taking advantage of the DSSCs’ absorption. Blocking some portion of the incident light, create an obstacle for the fungi’s photosynthesis, and this situation will eventually lead them to their death [5][6]. For these reasons this technology is very promising and there are a lot of features that might help us in the future.

The aim of this work is to synthetize both visible dyes and IR dyes and use them to make the DSSCs. The DSSCs is produced using the co-sensibilization technique shown by Michael Gratzel in his last work [7] and test the best device by using it in a real-world situation to prove if this concept works, if it’s sustainable and if can improve the growth efficiency of the plants while producing energy.