Agrivoltaics is a research field full of knowledge: how to combine agricultural harvesting with solar energy to improve the performance of both.

What excites researchers, farmers, and solar companies is that when crops are grown under an array of solar panels, the plants grow better, require less watering, and solar panels generate more electricity.

In Boulder, Colorado, visiting Jack’s solar garden, you might see a man driving a tractor under rows of solar panels, and people tending, harvesting, or sowing in nearby furrows. Jack's represents more than a dozen such projects in the United States-some are commercial projects and some are for research purposes only.

The man on the tractor is Byron Kominic. After working for the Peace Corps and the United States Agency for International Development, Kominic is now one of the most innovative farmers in the country. His 24-acre farm used to harvest only alfalfa and hay. After his grandfather Jack (with the same name as the thriving "Solar Garden") bought it, his family has owned it for 50 years.

After taking over the farm, he realized that it was losing money-and the county was not keen on his solar ideas.

"They said,'The land is for farming, so go and farm,'" Kominic told NPR. "I said, well, we are not making money. You all hope to be 100% renewable at some point, so how about we work together to solve this problem."

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Together with the city and county of Boulder, he obtained a permit to build an agricultural solar farm on his historic farmland.

He turned to Namaste Solar, a professional solar panel company, to plan and install 3,200 panels on one of his main enclosures. Even though various arrays have been built before, Namaste has installed one above the field crops for the first time.

Solar Power World reported that Namaste chose sophisticated trackers to track the sun in the sky and installed them based on strategically measured heights and spacings to allow enough sunlight to reach the crops below. Each row is installed at 8 feet above the ground to provide enough space to drive the tractor, and two rows are installed at 6 feet.

Now complete, Kominek’s farm generates enough electricity to power 300 private homes, 50 of which are now his energy customers—including cities and counties. Below are tomatoes, turnips, carrots, pumpkins, beets, lettuce, kale, beets and peppers.

This success is not obvious, and it requires a major leap of faith to be rewarded.

"We have to use our farm as collateral and solar panels as collateral for banks," he said. "If this doesn't work, we will lose the farm."

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Unfortunately for Kominek, during the same period when he was "betting on the farm", many studies in the United States showed the effectiveness of agricultural photovoltaic power generation.

GNN reported that some solar farms are using agricultural photovoltaic technology to grow pastures for grazing animals and local pollinators. In India, solar panels are being built on the canal. When they lose water by evaporation from the ground, they will cool the panels and increase their efficiency.

In 2019, a study by the University of Arizona and the University of Maryland found that combining solar panels with crops has great benefits. Above, it was found that the solar panels maintained a temperature of 16°F through the evaporation of the crop below, which was enough to increase its power generation by 2%.

Below, depending on the species, the yield of the few crops tested increased by 100% to 300%. The shading provided by solar panels reduced irrigation water consumption by 15% and water consumption by 157%.

Crops can also be protected from heavy rainfall or hail from the roof.

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In the past 8 years, the scale of agricultural photovoltaic farms has grown from 5MW to 2.9GW. Research by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that if only 1 million acres of farmland are covered by solar panels, the country will achieve its renewable energy Target.

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I am very happy to see how solar panels can increase crop yields, help reduce water use, and power 300 homes. It looks like this is the future trend that will help our country achieve its energy goals. Thanks to the good news network for this article. Best wishes to Kominek Farm.

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