Economic Analysis of the Agrivoltaics Opportunity in California: $15B for Cropland Farmers
September 4, 2026 Guest Author: Joseph Bouchard This is a summary of a post originally published on Substack. Visit @Solpomodoro to read the full piece. By 2045, about 6,000 California farmers could triple the value generated by their cropland through agrivoltaics — saving on electricity costs, selling energy, and continuing to produce food. (Almost) Too […]
Urban Agriculture and Agrivoltaics at UC ANR’s South Coast Research & Extension Center
September 1, 2026 Guest Author: Grant Johnson, Urban Agriculture Technology Advisor, UC Cooperative Extension UC ANR South Coast REC Agrivoltaics Trial At-A-Glance At the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) South Coast Research and Extension Center in Irvine, a unique field demonstration is proving that agriculture and solar power generation can thrive […]
Common Agrivoltaics Terms: Economic Feasibility
August 10, 2026 Conversations about the economics of an agrivoltaics project come with their own vocabulary. And whether a project makes financial sense depends on a number of factors. In this post, we focus on 10 common terms related to evaluating the economic feasibility of agrivoltaics – building on our previous posts on common agrivoltaics […]
Experimenting with Shade: Melons and tomatoes growing at UC Merced
July 30, 2026 UC Merced Shade Experiment At-A-Glance Researchers at University of California, Merced have made some interesting observations about the impacts of shade on melons and tomatoes. Conducted between May and September of 2025, a study led by Dr. Sarah Kurtz and PhD students Andrew Silverstein and Hossein Ashrafpour was designed to understand how […]
What Makes a Solar Project Agrivoltaics?
July 8, 2026 By Benjamin Narwold, contributing author Solar development is often seen as a threat to farmland, with an assumption that food production and energy production must compete for access to the same land. Agrivoltaics challenges that assumption. Agrivoltaics defined Agrivoltaics is the integration of agricultural production as the primary use and solar energy […]
Common Agrivoltaics Terms: System Design
July 1, 2026 By Daphne Condon, Ph.D. Agrivoltaics systems can look very different from one site to another. Some systems elevate panels above crops, while others place panels between crop rows or along field edges. These design choices can affect how much sunlight reaches the crops or how farming equipment moves throughout the space. Here, […]
How Agrivoltaics Can Help Conserve Water in California
June 7, 2026 Water scarcity is a growing concern in California’s agriculture industry, driven by a changing hotter and drier climate and the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which requires municipalities to bring groundwater use to sustainable levels by 2040. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) estimates that the combination of these forces will […]
Under the Panels at Spadra Farm
June 7, 2026 What We Are Learning About Agrivoltaics in Southern California By Rose Cesena Olivas, M.S., Robert Redford Conservancy at Pitzer College, Co-Principal Investigator and Dr. Eshwar Ravishankar, Cal Poly Pomona, Assistant Professor of Plant Science Cal Poly Pomona’s Spadra Farm Agrivoltaics Site At-A-Glance This agrivoltaic research site on Cal Poly Pomona’s Spadra Farm […]
Learning Under the Panels: Agrivoltaics Research at Chico State
May 7, 2026 By Benjamin Narwold, contributing author Chico State Agrivoltaics Site At-A-Glance Researchers at the agricultural research farm operated by California State University, Chico, are testing a simple idea with big implications: can solar panels be integrated into working farmland in a way that maintains, or even improves, crop yield and quality? The work […]
Agrivoltaics in Action: Inside the UC Davis Agrivoltaics Demonstration Site
April 27, 2026 By Benjamin Narwold, contributing author University of California Davis Agrivoltaics Demonstration Site At-A-Glance At the University of California, Davis, researchers are exploring a fascinating idea: what if farmland could provide multiple outputs, producing both food and renewable energy? Research at the UC Davis agrivoltaics demonstration site, led by Professor Majdi Abou Najm […]