In recent years, precision farming has been leveraging information infrastructure enabled by smart energy use, with designs for irrigation, sensors, automation, and post-harvesting services. In many agricultural regions, it is increasingly clear that, given the high cost of grid extensions and diesel-powered generators, traditional power grids are ill-suited. This corresponds to the rise of hybrid renewable energy systems. This study offers general considerations for optimizing and conducting cost studies of hybrid renewable energy systems in the precision agriculture sector. A comparison of the identified features has been employed to determine which hybrid configurations, their associated control strategies, optimization techniques, and assessment criteria are applicable to a given agricultural application. The summarized results point to a stronger tendency toward cost minimization and a system-oriented, consequently techno-centric design, with disproportionate underuse of explicit and realistic energy–water–crop interactions, real-time decision-making, and compensation for socio-economic aspects. The present article argues for a systems approach to solving the problem of sustainable, resilient precision farming, as well as the use of hybrid renewable energy sources and their smart deployment.

Keywords

Hybrid renewable energy systems, Precision agriculture, Techno-economic analysis, Energy system optimization, Sustainable agriculture