The American solar industry is testing the viability of co-locating solar PV and agriculture on the same plots, and the solar racking used on these projects makes that possible.
Credit: BlueWave
Pairing solar projects and agriculture isn’t yet an exact science, but no matter the activity happening below or near a PV array — if that’s tending to livestock, cultivating crops or maintaining pollinators — it often requires taller racking and more space between module rows. This combination of solar and farming is a form of dual-use photovoltaics, also known as agrisolar or agrivoltaics.
According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, the United States had more than 1.9 million farms tending to 880 million acres of farmland. While this still accounts for millions of square miles of land, American farmland has decreased by nearly 75 million acres since 1997, according to census reporting. Most of that lost farmland is pastureland used for livestock, and tracks with a policy change allowing farmers to grow animals in confinement, according to an analysis published by farmdocdaily.
“Farmers are very receptive to the idea of agrivoltaics but very hesitant to take on projects with risk,” said Ian Skor, owner and CEO of Sandbox Solar, a solar contractor in Fort Collins, Colorado, that is championing agrivoltaics. “Minor changes to their farming practice can have a big impact. They’re already operating on slim margins.”
Solar is pitched as a lifeline to farmers, a steady source of income that can help keep farmland in the family. Proving agricultural activity can continue within the borders of solar arrays can have a greater economic impact than choosing one or the other.
Agrivoltaic solar racking
Making solar racking suitable for agrivoltaic projects mostly means elevating it on higher posts to grant enough headroom for whatever happens beneath the modules. Extending the height of an array increases the impact of wind and other environmental conditions and requires additional engineering to ensure it can withstand the extra pressures. If a solar array is also sharing land with active farm equipment or livestock, especially cattle, then it must be built to handle possible collision too.
“By our earlier design decisions, we became inherently cow-proof — or buffalo-proof,” said Travis Jordan, CEO of MT Solar, a solar racking manufacturer from Montana. “Even large-scale ag equipment, we can handle some light rough housing. If a planter got thrown off and bashed into a post, it’s not going to hurt anything.”
MT Solar produces top-of-pole-mounted solar racking for agrivoltaic projects with a design informed by Jordan’s upbringing on an off-grid homestead. This pole mount was made to minimize construction activity by using a single ground-mounting point while still accommodating uneven terrains like Montana’s rising hills and mountains. The module table can be manually rotated to follow the sun’s course throughout the year and, for agrivoltaic purposes, adjusted to make room for farm equipment or planned shading.
Helge Biernath, CEO of solar contractor Sunstall and vertical racking manufacturer Sunzaun, said shade is a valuable resource as many crops, like root vegetables and leafy greens, only need a few hours of sunlight a day to grow; and agricultural workers value the shade when working in the sun for prolonged periods.
Credit: MT Solar
Sunzaun is a solar fencing product with a smaller project footprint than other ground-mount racking. While it doesn’t have the same generating capacity as a single-axis solar tracker, it can fit into narrower tracts and still produce electricity.
“You can actually gain something out of it, and your wood fence is not going to pay you back anything,” Biernath said. “Yes, the CapEx is going to be high in comparison, but there is going to be money coming in on the other end, and that’s the difference.”
Polar Racking, a solar racking manufacturer from Ontario, Canada, has designed three of its ground-mounts to work on dual-use projects. Each model — vertical fencing, fixed-tilt east-west canopy and single-axis tracker — are designed to minimize construction impact on these agricultural sites by reducing the number of piles necessary and preassembling components off-site.
Sam Alradhi, VP of operations at Polar Racking, said the goal is to not disrupt operations or damage a farmer’s soil, “because the soil is everything.” Additionally, the tracker and fixed-tilt models are elevated so livestock, farm equipment and produce can thrive underneath. Polar Racking has even modeled racking with feed trays so farm animals could eat in the shade of an array.
“It’s time that we utilize the land even more efficiently by again having our livestock or crops or whatever while producing solar. We don’t have to choose one over the other anymore. We can coexist,” Alradhi said.
Stracker Solar, a dual-axis solar tracker manufacturer from Oregon, initially designed its tracker with dual purposes in mind. These systems have been deployed in pilot agrivoltaic projects with universities and more commonly on car dealership lots. Jeff Sharpe, founder and COO of Stracker, spent 10 years farming a 50-acre plot in Montana and eight years designing a tracker to install over farmland.
“As we were designing and coming up with this tracker project, we saw the real value to the agricultural market, being able to have combines go under the equipment,” he said.
Making agrivoltaics work
Pairing a solar array and crops on the same plot increases the economic value of that single tract more than if the technology and crops were separated. It’s likely that the solar array will not have as large of a power density as a solar project without agriculture, but yields of both crops and electrons will be more profitable than a plot with only one or the other.
Credit: Oregon Clean Power Cooperative
Trade organization SolarPower Europe published the “Agrisolar Handbook” in 2024 as a resource for European farmers and solar developers, with the goal of making dual-use projects “benefit the farmer, the solar stakeholders, investors and the local community.”
American farmers and solar companies can take notes from the handbook, as both the European and American agricultural industries are facing similar hurdles of land constraints, income uncertainties and a changing climate resulting in water scarcity. Agrivoltaic projects have the potential to increase yields for certain varieties of shade crops, increase water retention, maintain soil temperatures, assist with carbon sequestration in soils and increase pollinator activities, according to the handbook.
BlueWave, a solar developer from Boston, has a department dedicated to dual-use solar projects. Jesse Robertson-DuBois, director of sustainable solar development at BlueWave and a farmer based in Western Massachusetts.
“I came to solar with the perspective that farmers are pretty innovative folks that figure out how to grow products or raise livestock in a lot of different places, and there’s none of this that’s that hard,” he said. “Solar development is hard. Farming is hard. The places where you can overlap them — it doesn’t take a magic wand — it just takes looking for the places and the people that have good overlap.”
Solar racking manufacturers are poised to fit the needs of the agricultural community as early agrivoltaic projects test the legitimacy of the pairing. The grid is electrifying, as is farming, and on-site solar is there to help both sides.
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