We’re doing a public good…it keeps land in agriculture.
– Joe Czajkowski
Benefits of Agrivoltaics
Why Farmers Like It
Agrivoltaics keeps land in production while producing renewable energy, provides farmers with revenue diversification, climate resilience planning, and water conservation opportunities.
Dual-Use
Agrivoltaics presents stacked benefits for farmers. Foremost, agrivoltaics keeps agricultural land in production.
Agrivoltaics acts as a term easement for the duration of the solar array’s operating life, providing farm protection from other, more permanent, development opportunities like housing.
Income Diversification
Whether owning a system or leasing the land to a system operator, agrivoltaics offers revenue diversification and additional income to the farm operation. This income can be used to support other areas of the farm business.
For example, a farmer may decide to use some of the solar revenue to invest in soil amendments, such as purchasing organic matter to spread on the agrivoltaic field thereby enriching the soil quality over the 20+ year life of the system.
This revenue stream is independent of the growing conditions for that given season, and with increasing weather extremes like drought and flooding, farm viability is top of mind.
Climate Resilience
Agrivoltaics can also provide protection benefits for crops and livestock alike.
Dual-use solar provides shade protection that can avoid heat stress in both crops and livestock. Reducing heat stress can be critical for animal welfare during periods of high temperatures.
Water Conservation
The shade from solar panels can reduce evaporation from the soil, conserving water and improving irrigation efficiency.
This is particularly important in arid regions or during droughts as we’ve experienced in the Northeast in 2016, 2020, and 2022.
Renewable Energy Promotion
Agricultural land and energy generation have long been combined. From oil drills on ranch land to methane digesters on dairy farms to wind turbines above corn and soy, agrivoltaics is a new dual-use agriculture + energy opportunity.
Agrivoltaics supports the transition to renewable energy by increasing solar power generation. This can help farmers reduce their carbon footprint too.
Hear from the Farmer!
Energy Sustainability shouldn’t be our only goal. Our goal is to improve the quality of this farmland over the life of the solar array.
— Joe C., Farmer