Agrivoltaics: farming and solar energy on the same land
Agrivoltaics is the one idea in this field that is genuinely interesting rather than merely commercial, and it is also the one most often oversold. This page sets out what agrivoltaic systems are, where the research came from, how elevated, spaced and vertical designs differ, what solar grazing and cropping beneath panels actually achieve, and what the downsides are. It is a page about how agriculture and solar power share a field, not a page selling either. We arrange rooftop and on farm solar rather than agrivoltaic schemes, so nothing here is a sales page.
Contents
Agrivoltaic systems put solar generation and farming on the same ground
Agrivoltaics is the practice of using one piece of land for agriculture and for solar energy production at the same time, rather than choosing between the two.
A conventional solar farm takes land out of production for the life of the lease. An agrivoltaic system is designed from the start so that farming continues underneath and between the panels: the modules are raised, spaced, angled or made semi transparent so that enough light, water and machinery access reach the crop or the sward below. The value on offer is land use efficiency. One hectare does two jobs, and the combined value of clean energy and agriculture is meant to exceed what either use delivers alone. That is the whole argument for sustainable dual use of farmland, and it is why agrivoltaic projects attract research money.
The term covers a wide range of practice. At the simple end, sheep graze beneath conventional rows on an ordinary solar farm, which needs no special design at all. At the ambitious end, five metre elevated arrays run above arable crops, or spectrally selective modules form the roof of a greenhouse. Between those two poles sit vertical bifacial fences, widened row pitches and single axis tracking used deliberately to manage shade. They are all agrivoltaic systems, and their economics are not remotely alike. What they share is that agriculture continues on the land while solar power is generated above it.
Who invented agrivoltaics, and the research that followed
Adolf Goetzberger and Armin Zastrow proposed the dual use of farmland for solar energy and crops in 1981, which is the origin the agrivoltaics research literature consistently cites.
Goetzberger founded the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg in the same year, and the institute has stayed close to the subject ever since. The first working systems were built in Japan from 2004 by Akira Nagashima under the name solar sharing. The word agrivoltaic entered the literature in 2011, in a paper by Christian Dupraz and colleagues in Renewable Energy on combining solar panels and food crops to optimise land use, which also introduced the land equivalent ratio as the way to judge whether agriculture and solar on one site beat two separate ones.
The research has broadened considerably since. Fraunhofer ISE ran a pilot at Heggelbach in southern Germany from 2016 that put an elevated array over a rotation of arable and forage crops. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the United States runs the InSPIRE programme on the same questions across a range of American climates. Work appears regularly in journals such as Applied Energy and Renewable Energy, and Germany published DIN SPEC 91434 to define agrivoltaic categories and set minimum requirements for the land remaining genuinely agricultural, which is the nearest thing the field has to a sustainable agriculture standard. Europe and the United States between them hold most of the published evidence, and most large agrivoltaic projects sit in Europe: Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands.
Elevated, spaced and vertical agrivoltaic systems
Agrivoltaic system design is a negotiation between the light the panels take and the light the crop needs, and every configuration resolves it differently.
Agrivoltaic systems fall into five families in common use, and the choice is driven by what is being farmed rather than by what generates most power. Raising an array lets machinery work beneath it but multiplies the structural cost. Spacing the rows lets light reach the ground but reduces modules per hectare. Standing panels vertically gives full machinery access and moves generation to morning and evening, which can suit a farm with an early and late load. None of these agrivoltaic systems is free, and each takes some solar power off the table to leave light for agriculture.
Fixed elevated arrays
Panels sit on raised frames, typically four to five metres clear, so a tractor, sprayer or combine passes underneath. Clearance is what costs: steel weight, foundation depth and wind loading rise together, and a design that works at two metres is a different structure at five.
Inter-row spacing and vertical bifacial
Widening the pitch between conventional rows is the cheapest intervention available, because nothing about the mounting changes. Vertical bifacial systems stand modules on edge in north to south fences, harvesting on both faces and leaving wide alleys for machinery and grazing. Their output peaks morning and late afternoon rather than at midday, which flattens the curve and can raise self-consumption on a farm with early and late demand.
Tracking, dynamic and greenhouse integrated
Single axis tracking can be operated to shade a crop deliberately at the growth stages that benefit and to open up when the crop needs light, which turns shade into a managed input. Spectrally selective and semi transparent modules do a similar job in a greenhouse roof, passing the wavelengths plants use and converting the rest. Both add control complexity and operating cost, and both need further development before they are common outside research.
| System type | Layout | What is farmed | The trade off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed elevated | Panels on raised frames, typically four to five metres clear | Combinable crops, field vegetables, machinery passes beneath | Steel and foundation cost rises sharply with clearance |
| Inter-row spaced | Conventional table height rows, pitch widened to let light through | Grass, grazing, narrow cropping strips between the rows | Fewer modules per hectare, so energy production per hectare falls |
| Vertical bifacial | Modules stood on edge in north to south fences | Full width machinery access in the alleys, grazing, arable | Generation peaks morning and evening rather than midday |
| Tracking and dynamic | Single axis tracking, with shade managed as an input | Crops that need light at set growth stages | More moving parts, higher operating cost, more complex control |
| Greenhouse integrated | Semi transparent or spectrally selective modules in the roof | Protected horticulture, propagation, soft fruit | Light transmission is a design trade off made once, at build |
Solar grazing: sheep beneath the panels
Solar grazing is the practice of running livestock, almost always sheep, on the land beneath and between the rows of an operational solar site.
It is the most widely practised form of agrivoltaics by a long way, and the only one that needs no change to a conventional array. The vegetation under solar panels has to be managed regardless, because grass growing into the modules shades cells and cuts output. Grazing does that job biologically instead of with mowers, which removes a recurring operating cost for the site owner and provides forage for the grazier. Most large-scale solar projects in Britain run some form of sheep grazing, and the American Solar Grazing Association exists to formalise the same arrangement in the United States. It is the cheapest sustainable answer to a problem the site has anyway.
The practical detail matters more than the principle. Clearance sets whether the flock moves freely and whether the sward under the rows is reachable. Cabling has to be protected or buried. Fencing, water, handling facilities and a route in and out have to work for the shepherd rather than the maintenance contractor. Stocking rate depends on what the sward grows under partial shade, which is less than open pasture in a wet year and sometimes more in a dry one.
Can you graze cattle around solar panels?
Rarely, and for structural reasons. Cattle rub against mounting frames, reach cabling and can displace modules, and conventional arrays sit too low to keep equipment out of range. Cattle compatible designs use raised frames, strengthened posts, protected cable runs and wider alleys. They cost more, they are uncommon, and no developer will accept cattle on a standard system without a design change and a conversation with its insurer.
Crops under panels, and what shade does to yield
Partial shade reduces the light available for photosynthesis while also reducing water loss and leaf temperature, so the effect on a crop depends on which of those constraints is binding.
That is the whole of the agronomy in one sentence, and it explains why the published results look contradictory. In a hot dry climate where water is the limiting factor, shading can cut evapotranspiration enough that yield holds or rises, and the microclimate beneath an array genuinely helps. In a cool cloudy climate where light is already the limiting factor, taking more of it away costs yield. The United Kingdom sits firmly in the second category for most of the growing season.
Crop choice follows from that. Shade tolerant crops respond best: leafy vegetables, soft fruit, some brassicas, herbs, forage grass and crops that already grow under protection. Light hungry combinable crops respond worst, and the taller and later the crop the harder the harvest logistics become. Machinery is its own constraint, because turning circles, boom widths and header widths all have to fit the row pitch that the design fixed years earlier. Food production continues, but on the crop list the panels allow rather than the one the farm would otherwise choose.
The metric to look for in any study is the land equivalent ratio, which compares the combined agricultural and energy output of the shared site against producing each separately. A ratio above one means the shared land beat the split. Ratios above one are reported in the literature, and so are ratios well below one. Read the crop, the climate and the design before you read the number, because a result from Montpellier or Colorado is not a result from Shropshire.
What are the downsides of agrivoltaics?
The costs of an agrivoltaic system fall on the structure and the operation rather than on the panels, which is why it is more expensive than a conventional array and much more expensive than a roof.
- Capital cost. Raising modules or strengthening frames adds steel, foundations and wind loading. The panels are the cheap part of any solar project and the structure is not.
- Lower energy production per hectare. Spacing rows to pass light through means fewer modules on the same land, so output per hectare falls while cost per kWp rises.
- Crop yield. In a climate where light limits growth, shading costs yield. The increase in water use efficiency that helps agriculture in southern Europe helps less here, and no increase in energy value offsets a lost crop.
- Machinery and operations. Row pitch, clearance and post spacing are fixed at build and constrain every implement that follows for the next thirty years.
- Maintenance and damage. Livestock, sprayers, dust and crop residue all reach equipment that a fenced conventional site keeps away from them. Soiling reduces output.
- Contractual complexity. Two businesses now share one field. Access, liability, insurance, crop damage and who controls the sward have to be written down in advance.
- Evidence transfer. Most agrivoltaics research reports on climates sunnier than Britain. Applying a continental land equivalent ratio to a British field is not analysis.
None of that makes agrivoltaics a bad idea. It makes it a design and finance problem rather than a product, and it explains why the version that has actually scaled in Britain is the cheapest one: sheep beneath conventional rows. There is one further point in its favour. Keeping land in agriculture helps the social licence that large solar projects need, and social acceptance decides as many schemes as planning policy does.
Agrivoltaics in the United Kingdom
British practice concentrates on solar grazing and biodiversity management rather than on cropping beneath elevated arrays, and the reasons are economic rather than agronomic.
Irradiance is the first reason. A British site receives materially less annual irradiation than southern Europe or the American south west, so every unit of generation given up to let light through costs more, in relative terms, than it would in Italy or Colorado. Modelled figures for any postcode can be checked free using the European Commission's PVGIS tool, version 5.2. The second reason is the grid: connection capacity and queue position decide which large-scale solar projects proceed, and design ambition does not change that. The third is planning, where continued agriculture on the site is a material consideration that helps a case, though it does not carry it alone. Further research funded through British universities and levy bodies is narrowing the evidence gap, but slowly.
The result is a working middle ground. Sheep graze beneath panels across the country, margins and hedgerows are planted for biodiversity net gain, and sites are managed for soil and for sward rather than mown to bare ground. It is unglamorous, it is genuinely sustainable land management, it keeps clean energy and agriculture on the same fields, and it is the form of agrivoltaics most British farms will actually encounter. The Renewable Energy Planning Database published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Q1 2026, is the place to see which projects near you are consented, built or refused.
- You are already in conversation with a developer about a large-scale solar scheme and want the land kept in production
- The holding runs sheep that could graze beneath and between the rows
- You grow protected or shade tolerant crops where a light trade off can be designed for
- Planning is the obstacle and continued agricultural use materially improves the case
- You want to cut the electricity bill on a grain store, dairy, poultry unit or packhouse
- You want the capital cost per kWp as low as it goes, which is a roof, not a raised steel frame
- You have no grid export headroom, since self-consumption needs none
- You want it working this year rather than after a research grade design exercise
The version we can actually quote
We arrange rooftop and on farm solar sized to what the holding consumes, not agrivoltaic research schemes. Send the postcode and the buildings, and we come back with what those roofs can carry, what they would generate against your consumption, and what it costs.
No survey fee and no obligation to proceed.
Questions about agrivoltaics
- What are the downsides of agrivoltaics?
- The downsides are real and mostly financial. Elevating panels four or five metres above a field, or strengthening frames so machinery and livestock can pass, costs materially more per kWp than a conventional ground array and far more than a farm roof. Spacing rows to let light through cuts the number of modules per hectare, so energy production per hectare falls at the same time as cost per kWp rises. Shade reduces yield for light hungry crops. Cables, inverters and mounting structures in a working field add damage risk, soiling and operating cost. And most published agrivoltaics research comes from climates with higher irradiance than the United Kingdom, so results do not transfer cleanly.
- Who invented agrivoltaics?
- The concept was proposed in 1981 by Adolf Goetzberger and Armin Zastrow at what became the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Germany, who set out how solar energy conversion and plant cultivation could share the same land. Akira Nagashima built the first practical systems in Japan from 2004 under the name solar sharing. The word agrivoltaic itself was coined by Christian Dupraz and colleagues in a 2011 paper in the journal Renewable Energy on combining solar panels and food crops to optimise land use. No single person invented it, but those three steps are the ones the literature keeps returning to.
- Can you graze cattle around solar panels?
- Sheep are the standard livestock for solar grazing and cattle are the exception, for structural reasons rather than agricultural ones. Cattle rub against mounting frames, reach cabling, and are heavy enough to damage posts and displace modules, and a conventional array sits too low to keep equipment out of reach. Cattle compatible designs exist: raised frames, strengthened posts, protected cable runs and wider alleys. They cost more and are far less common. Sheep, by contrast, keep the sward down, cannot reach the modules on a standard system, and are used on operational solar farms across Europe and the United States.
- How do you pronounce agrivoltaics, and is it agrovoltaics?
- Agrivoltaics is said as agri, then voltaics, with the stress on the third syllable. Agrovoltaics, agrophotovoltaics and agri-PV all describe the same practice and appear in different national literatures; the German work often uses agrophotovoltaics, French and Italian sources use agrivoltaics or agrivoltaico, and solar sharing is the Japanese term. Solar grazing is narrower and means livestock beneath panels specifically. None of the variants signals a different technology.
- Does agrivoltaics reduce crop yield?
- Usually yes, for most crops, and the question is by how much and whether the energy production is worth it. The metric researchers use is the land equivalent ratio, which compares the combined output of the shared site against growing and generating separately on two pieces of land. Shade tolerant crops, leafy vegetables, soft fruit and pasture tend to lose least, and in hot dry conditions partial shade can reduce water stress enough that yield holds or improves. Light hungry combinable crops lose most. The results are highly specific to crop, climate, design and season, which is why a single headline figure from one trial should not be applied to a British field.
- Is agrivoltaics viable in the United Kingdom?
- Sheep grazing beneath conventional arrays is already normal practice on operational British solar farms, and that is agrivoltaics in its simplest form. Elevated and spaced cropping systems are at a much earlier stage here than in Germany, France, Italy or the United States, because irradiance is lower, because the extra structural cost is harder to recover, and because planning and grid constraints bite before design ambition does. Treat it as a live and credible research area, and a sustainable use of land already committed to generation, rather than a product you can order.
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges the survey, the design and the installation through an MCS-certified partner. This page summarises published agrivoltaics research and is not agronomic, design or investment advice. Take your own professional advice before committing to any scheme.