a new Harvest
Agrivoltaics is sparking interest on farms of all sizes across the country.
Gina Thurn describes farming in New England as idyllic — rolling hills, scenic vistas and picturesque farmhouses. Solar panels aren’t typically a part of that mental image, but the Rhode Island farmer, who runs Our Kids Farm with her husband Loren thinks they should be. When the Thurns added a small solar array to their modest farm — less than 5 acres, with a 1⁄2 an acre in agricultural production — their goal was like the goals of most farmers across America: They wanted to get creative with their resources to benefit production, profit and the land itself.
Our Kids Farm is far from the only farm dipping its hoe into renewable energy. An emerging trend called agrivoltaics — a combination of the words “agriculture” and “photovoltaics” — is popping up at more research facilities, pastures and farms nationwide. Agrivoltaics is the practice of developing land for solar energy production while also keeping it in agricultural production. That can look a few different ways, such as growing crops, running livestock, cultivating pollinator habitats and more. But no matter what method you choose — and for farms of all sizes — agrivoltaics can be an innovative way to introduce new revenue, new opportunities and new ways of thinking.
BENEFITS OF AGRIVOLTAICS
For Our Kids Farm, venturing into agrivoltaics allowed for double the benefit from just one plot of land. “It’s about making the maximum use of your space possible,” Gina Thurn says. “[We asked ourselves:] What can we do with the resources and the space that we have to expand our growing season from a six or eight-month growing season to a year-round growing season?”
The fence surrounding the panels provides built-in trellising space for climbing plants. The shade offered by the panels extends the growing season for shade-loving and cool-weather crops. That shade is one of the huge benefits of agrivoltaics, according to Byron Kominek, owner and manager of Jack’s Solar Garden in Longmont, Colorado.
Relief from the blistering, dry heat of Colorado summers can keep livestock cooler, crops healthier and — importantly — farmworkers safer.
“Having a little bit of shade on the ground helps not just the crops and the soils, but also the people that are there,” Kominek says. “They can plan their days around where the shade is going to move, because we know how the sun is going to move throughout the day. They can always just be a few steps away from the shade, and they can leave their water bottles in the shade to keep those cool.”
Jack’s Solar Garden, which is also home to the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center, is the largest commercially active agrivoltaics research facility in the U.S. and has panels that follow the sun throughout the day. Those panels offer revolving shade schedules, but even for fixed panels that don’t move, the shady times of the day are easy to plan for.
The panels at Jack’s Solar Garden are tall — ranging from 6 to 8 feet, with enough room for people to work and run machinery underneath. The height of the panels determines how you can best utilize the land. That doesn’t mean shorter panels can’t be successful; the name of the game is matching the crop to the logistics of the array. If you’re growing tomatoes, you’ll need your panels to be taller. If you’re focusing on pollinator habitats and know you won’t need to get any machinery under the panels, shorter panels may be a good fit.
“I try to tell folks it’s all about diversification,” Kominek says. “If you have shorter panels, you limit what you’re able to do there. It kind of just depends on what your expertise is.”
He went on to say that diversification doesn’t have to stop at crops. Kominek recommends future-proofing your operation by making sure you can grow different kinds of products in and around your solar array, as well as in thinking about how to right-size the investments in the array itself. Not every panel has to be 6 feet tall, but if even some of them are, you’re setting yourself up for more success.
THE EWES HAVE IT
The solar array Emily Mauntel ran her sheep under in 2022 in Fairfield, Iowa, had panels significantly shorter than those at Jack’s Solar Garden. The panels were tall enough for her 29 ewes and a ram (and the resulting lambs) to peacefully graze under but not tall enough for Mauntel herself to clear. While Mauntel’s Solar Sheep was a brief project, starting in May 2022 and wrapping up before the end of the year, it was a positive experiment to see how well sheep could thrive on solar array pastureland.
Mauntel was able to run the sheep successfully for the full summer and fall without having to supplement their feed. This was, in large part, because the pasture had been planted as a pollinator garden, which thrived under the shade of the panels. Plus, the sheep — and the bees — loved the mix of chicory, clover and plantain leaves. By the end of the summer, you couldn’t tell that the small herd of fat, happy sheep was grass-fed rather than grain-fed.
“The sheep just do their own thing,” Mauntel says. “The solar panels are perfect because [they] always provides shade for them. They were really happy.”
While Mauntel ended up selling the herd and moving to Virginia, she has been brainstorming new ways to bring agrivoltaics to a pasture, or maybe even a vineyard, near her.
IT’S ALL GRAVY
Farming on a solar array can have big agricultural yields, and it can also yield big savings and, depending on the size of the operation, big earnings, too. Our Kids Farm is able to offset 100% of their annual energy costs from what their panels generate, which is a huge benefit, as energy costs are the farm’s single largest annual expense.
For larger-scale developments, paying your own electricity bills can turn into selling electricity to others. At Jack’s Solar Garden, which used to be a hay farm from 1972 when Kominek’s grandfather bought it, up until as recently as 2019, some 3,200 solar panels produce enough energy to power more than 300 homes. Kominek has residential and commercial subscribers who benefit from the energy produced at Jack’s Solar Garden, as well as
larger municipal clients such as the City of Boulder and Boulder County.
“We make more money off of selling electricity than we ever did off of haying,” Kominek says. “So, in terms of the stuff growing underneath the solar panels, basically, that’s all gravy.”
But even for the smaller operations, the return on investment is substantial. Thurn, who rents the solar equipment from a local company, estimates that between the revenue from the crops grown in the solar array and the savings on energy costs, her family would be able to afford to buy outright all the solar equipment within 5 to 7 years. While their rental agreement works well for them right now, knowing that they’re generating that kind of revenue makes a big difference.
The Thurns are also saving money on water for their array, because due to the set-up of the panels, they can capture rainwater that then goes back into the crops.
POTENTIAL OBSTACLES
The field of agrivoltaics may be newer in the U.S., but it’s far from new internationally. Many other countries worldwide, including Japan, Germany and France, have been incorporating agrivoltaic practices for years. As the U.S. continues to grow and expand in this field, however, there are challenges on the horizon. One of the largest of those is the obstacles farmers face in being able to install solar in the first place.
That peaceful Rhode Island aesthetic mentioned before? Thurn has found that old habits die hard, and some local policies make solar development nearly impossible for smaller producers. In those instances, she says, it’s all about advocacy.
“The challenge has been trying to get people to understand that we can change, we can still look good and we can still have rural character,” she says. “We can still produce fresh vegetables and raise livestock and do all of these things in the same space as solar. [Adding a solar array] doesn’t have to take land out of production. In fact, you can maximize the production and keep your farm viable. That land doesn’t have to stay empty; use it. Use it twice, and it’s double-productive.”
For Kominek, the political challenges of agrivoltaics extend beyond the city, town and county councils, and all the way up to the state and national policies that impact just how beneficial solar energy development can be for farmers. He shares that while many policymakers have an interest in renewable energy, it has to be about more than the money, and about the environmental factors and land stewardship.
He sees the future success of the agrivoltaics industry hinging on more focus on land conservation, tying in easements and truly valuing renewable energy and those who produce it. At the end of the day, the land — and how to not only develop it for agrivoltaics, but also how to protect it for native species and for future use — needs to be seen as just as valuable as the electricity it can produce.
IT’S JUST WHAT FARMERS DO
When Thurn gets flak from others in her community about solar farming, she understands.
People tell her a solar farm isn’t really a farm, but she reminds them that she is far from the first farmer to do something crazy in the name of making things better for her land, her family and her community.
“It’s about thinking outside the box and being a little bit creative and doing what farmers have done for generations of trying to be entrepreneurs and be inventors and use the land in new ways,” Thurn says. “It keeps you viable.”
And part of that viability is keeping farming a tenable option in her community. Farmers in the New England area are often “land rich but crop poor,” because the value and cost of their land far outweighs what they can produce on it. For farming — and farm families such as hers — to survive in that kind of economic situation, growing and strengthening local resilience is vital.
Kominek feels that focusing on being more local is what agrivoltaics is all about, and that’s one of the ways it aligns so well with the rest of the agricultural industry, especially small and hobby farmers.
“It’s about having local power of production,” he says. “When you have your own onsite solar needs and you can have onsite food production, it’s close for you and your neighbors and it can create jobs in that local area. It really is all about being local versus trying to extract from somewhere else.”
GOOD FOR THE NEXT GENERATION
When Thurn and her husband first bought their farm, she was pregnant with their first child. It was 2007, and six months later, the economy crashed.
“I had to figure out how to keep food on my kid’s plate, and the ability to be innovative and do things differently and think outside the box is what’s kept us alive,” she says.
Now, almost 16 years later, as her oldest son has watched his parents innovate, risk and tinker,
he’s following in their footsteps. After watching the agrivoltaics efforts on the farm, he’s found a passion for renewable energy and is starting a program at school focusing on wind energy and turbines. Knowing that her child is pursuing an interest that might make the world a little better is gratifying. Knowing her efforts are making the world a little better for two sons is gratifying, too.
“It’s about being able to pass on that knowledge, whether my kids farm or not,” Thurn says. “They are thinkers. They see that they can do something that’s good and right and be different, and that that’s OK. It empowers them to be dreamers, to accomplish different goals and to do something that’s good for the environment. It’s something I’m really proud of.”
Nikki Wellander is a journalist living in Colorado. She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Metropolitan State University of Denver and has worked in media and communications for more than 15 years.