Farmer-first approach to agrivoltaics will benefit NY food, energy goals

“I said, ‘You can do sheep.’ He said, ‘No. I do hay, corn, a couple beefers and 20-30 dairy cows,” recounted Hering, chief executive officer and co-founder of Boston-based ClearPath Energy. “We realized if we spaced out the panels a little bit more, they wouldn’t shade each other so much in the morning and evening, and we could get three or four very clean tractor passes between the panels.” 

They worked together and carefully designed a system that would work for the grower and the developer. Now, the panels are generating energy, rent checks are coming in and the farmer produced 85% of his normal yield off the first cutting on his hay field this year. 

The New Bremen dairy is one of a handful of New York farms that are pioneering agrivoltaics: co-location of solar energy production and agriculture on the same land. Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) is establishing an agrivoltaics research program, with $1 million in initial support from New York state. The program will bring together dozens of researchers across campus and external partners to explore the engineering, agronomics, economics, policy and social science of agrivoltaics, said Julie Suarez, CALS associate dean for land-grant affairs and director of translational research programs. 

“Our goal is to catalyze necessary research and development by bringing together multiple disciplines to help create science-based solutions to deploy renewable energy in ways that do not negatively impact farm production and the local food system,” Suarez said. “We thank Senator Michelle Hinchey, Assemblymember Anna Kelles and Assemblymember Donna Lupardo for championing this important research.”

“Cornell is kind of the objective third party that can provide unbiased information to help farmers, landowners and policymakers make decisions,” said Antonio DiTommaso, professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science’s Soil and Crop Sciences Section and associate director of the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station. “This is where we as the land-grant university for New York can test some of these company claims and provide legitimate data.”

The buildout of solar energy infrastructure across New York has become an issue of grave concern for many farmers and those worried about the state’s agricultural communities. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 10 million acres will be needed to meet solar energy production goals by 2050, and American Farmland Trust estimates 80% of that could be built on agricultural lands. 

“One of the big questions is always, how will landowners, both farmers and non-farmers, respond to solar leasing opportunities?” said Rich Stedman, professor of natural resources and the environment. “Some people fear this will be the death of farming, that people are going to lease their acres for solar panels and that’ll be it – it will be an ‘exit strategy’ and that land will be lost to production. Other people have hypothesized that the additional income will enable people who want to stay in farming to do so.”

Stedman studies the social science dynamics of energy transformations, and has conducted surveys and focus groups with farmers and other landowners. One recently completed survey of New York state landowners living near transmission lines and electricity substations found that farmers were more opposed than non-farmers to large-scale solar development in their area, and that farmers were more likely than non-farmers to be approached by solar developers but less likely to lease their land. The research also found that among farmers who have leased their land, about half expect to continue producing agricultural products on the land with solar panels. 

“So there certainly is interest in this idea of agrivoltaics, but people want a lot more information about what that would actually mean for their farms,” Stedman said. “Because agricultural land is so ‘in the crosshairs’ with utility-scale solar, it’s very important that we figure out how to avoid prime farmland and how to work with farmers in a way that honors what they actually do and want to do.”

Elizabeth Ryan ’82 is owner of Hudson Valley Farmhouse Cider and Stone Ridge Orchard, where she grows a wide variety of vegetables and fruits, including 1,000 acres of apples. Ryan is in early negotiations with Chuck Schwartz, agrivoltaics consultant for Sun’Agri and New York State Solar Farm, to incorporate solar panels into her orchards. 

“Agrivoltaics are the missing link in the whole system, because they allow growers to dual-crop, so to speak: harvest the sun and harvest plants or graze livestock under the panels,” she said. “I’m super excited about this concept and see it as the next frontier.”

Research in France from Sun’Agri found that adjustable-tilt solar panels above a vineyard reduced heat stress on the crop by providing shade, protected plants against late frost by holding in more nighttime heat and reduced irrigation requirements by minimizing evaporation. On overcast days, the panels could be straightened to allow in more light, and during hail or heavy rain storms, panels could be flattened to protect plants.

Separate research led by Max Zhang, the Irving Porter Church Professor of Engineering in the College of Engineering, found that agrivoltaic systems can benefit the solar panels themselves. Panels traditionally have been mounted half a meter off the ground, to save on building costs. This leaves little room for farmers, let alone equipment. Zhang and his colleagues developed a physics-based model which demonstrated that when panels are placed four meters above soybean fields, they are up to 10 degrees Celsius cooler, compared with panels placed over bare ground. This cooling effect can make the panels more efficient and longer lasting. 

Schwartz hopes to see such positive results on New York farms. 

“We’re taking a real farmer-first attitude on this,” Schwartz said. “The data is showing that you can produce a lot of electricity and improve the resiliency of those plants, and that’s really key to what we’re doing.”

 Agrivoltaics are not appropriate for every field or every farm: For example, New York grows 1 million acres of corn each year, and researchers, developers and growers all agree that trying to combine corn and solar panels would be logistically infeasible. Working around solar panels is also more difficult the larger the operation and its equipment, said Joe Lawrence, dairy forage systems specialist with PRO-DAIRY.

“The average farm size keeps increasing in New York,” Lawrence said. “If you’re milking 50-60 cows in a traditional dairy farm and making round bales with a mower that’s 8 feet wide, cutting around solar panels could work well. But more and more in our dairy and field crops, we’re talking about 1,000 cows and a 30-foot-wide mower chopping into a tractor trailer driving next to it.” 

To protect prime farmland, Lawrence said he hopes state and local officials will allocate resources to building new power lines and substations in areas with less-productive farmland, where landowners may be eager to lease for renewable energy production. This, along with siting solar panels on already-developed lands, such as along highways, could alleviate the pressure on the most productive acres, he said.

“The history lesson is that the most productive farmland is where the population centers grew and where the roads and electrical infrastructure grew,” he said. “Meanwhile there are areas with very poor soils and little farming going on where people would really benefit from these solar leases, but often these areas lack the electrical infrastructure to move the power.” 

Linda Garrett, New York regional director for American Farmland Trust, also believes that protecting farmland and farmers is key, and agrivoltaics could be part of the solution, especially for small and beginning farmers. 

“We need to change the narrative around the solar buildout and start thinking about agrivoltaics as a farm viability tool,” Garrett said. American Farmland Trust has developed “smart solar” principles and is working on an agrivoltaics guide to help farmers understand how to advocate for their needs with developers and local municipalities. 

“We want to help farmers understand where their power is,” she said. “Farmers could require developers to dig a well or provide appropriate fencing. Town boards can change zoning requirements in ways that support agrivoltaic projects, or even require land access on solar sites for growers. We want to empower farmers so that this renewable buildout can become an opportunity rather than a threat.”

DiTommaso, a weed ecologist, is overseeing projects that will test the viability of a variety of crops grown around solar panels in New York, alongside collaborator Steve Grodsky, assistant professor courtesy of natural resources and the environment. Caroline Marschner, an extension associate in DiTommaso’s lab, is the project coordinator organizing the work of diverse researchers and many external partners. They’ll study how solar panels impact weed and pest pressure, disease occurrence, soil health and productivity.

“When this buildout started, the goal was just energy production. Now we’re saying, you need to think about energy production and agricultural systems,” DiTommaso said. “If a grower can get some revenue from leasing land to these solar companies and still get hay off, grow crops or graze livestock, that could be really important for the farm’s viability. But to make it work, we need to push the envelope on the engineering, the policy, the economics, the ecology – everything.”