Agrivoltaics could transform Colorado farming and energy

This article appears in the Fall 2025 issue of ColoradoBiz under the headline: Farming the Sun: How agrivoltaics could transform Colorado agriculture.

Agrivoltaics, or solar installations on active agricultural (ag) lands, have the potential to power the planet.

A 2019 Oregon State University study found that installing solar panels on just 1 percent of U.S. farmland could fulfill global energy demand. More recent research out of Michigan State University found that farmers who used a small percentage of their land for solar arrays were more financially secure than those who didn’t.

But there’s a catch: Many solar projects are going into farmland and supplanting agriculture. As of 2025, 84 percent of new solar power installations are being placed on agricultural lands, according to a report from the American Farmland Trust (AFT). In some cases, solar is outright replacing agriculture, but other developers are employing agrivoltaics’ multipurpose model.

“As a farmland conservation organization, solar is a nuanced issue for us,” says Austin Kinzer, agrivoltaics senior technical specialist with AFT. “By midcentury, we’re looking at around 10 million acres of farmland being taken out by solar. We recognize the need for clean energy and also recognize that it’s conflicting with ag in many cases.”

Case in point: The acreage devoted to farmland in the U.S. is down roughly 10 percent in the 21st century alone, a decline of about 75 million acres. In Colorado, the amount of irrigated farmland dropped by more than 1 million acres between 1998 and 2020, a 39 percent dip.

Kinzer says agrivoltaics could stem the tide. “If it’s done well, it can actually help struggling farmers, help keep land in the family, and is a big opportunity,” he explains. “It’s a great diversification strategy for farmers.”

It remains fairly nascent. Agrivoltaics is already about 10 percent of ground-mounted solar capacity in the U.S., but nearly all of that is sheep grazing, typically a temporary application that’s an alternative to mowing.

On farmland, the machinery for planting and harvesting crops doesn’t always mesh well with solar, but agrivoltaics can actually improve yields, conserve water and protect plants and livestock from extreme weather. “Panels help trap heat and keep it a little warmer when it’s cold out, and likewise, they help reduce the temperature when it’s hot out,” he says.

As owner and manager of Jack’s Solar Garden and the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center in Longmont, Byron Kominek knows this firsthand. Jack’s is named for Kominek’s grandfather, Jack Stingerie, who started a hay and alfalfa farm on the 24-acre site in the 1970s. Kominek changed the model by adding a 1.2-megawatt system with 3,276 panels on about four acres that’s been operational since 2020.

“The idea of agrivoltaics is trying to maximize the benefit of the land for both clean energy production for society and being able to grow food and keep livestock for everybody,” says Kominek. “We built the solar array to maximize energy production, but we made a few alterations to the solar array so that we could allow for taller crops, taller animals, taller people and different types of machinery within the system.”

The arid climate ultimately makes agrivoltaics an especially good fit in Colorado. “Researchers from CSU [Colorado State University] like to tell us that Colorado is not light-limited, we’re water-limited,” says Kominek. “Shade on the ground helps to keep moisture in the ground longer, which means you don’t have to irrigate as much or as frequently, and there’s a deeper bank of moisture in the soil for different types of vegetation to access over time.”

Sprout City Farms, a Lakewood-based nonprofit, has been growing a variety of vegetables within the solar array at Jack’s, and leafy greens have thrived in the microclimate under the panels. “The shade forces the biomass above ground to grow more so that it can capture more light,” says Kominek.

Fort Collins-based Sandbox Solar has embraced a flexible approach to agrivoltaics. Owner and CEO Ian Skor has pursued agrivoltaics since 2018, three years after he started the company “with a toolbox and a Subaru.” Now 50 employees, Sandbox has partnered with CSU on agrivoltaics research projects and installed systems for several clients in the time since.

The field’s nascency has proven a stumbling block. “A lot of the traditional solar developers and financiers are hesitant to take on anything new,” says Skor. The dynamic led Sandbox to develop Spade, a software modeling tool for agrivoltaics, in 2020.

Spade has since helped Skor and company devise creative systems for several customers. At Spring Hill Greens in Fort Collins, Sandbox installed vertical panels between greenhouses, which Skor says produces the most energy per square foot of any orientation. For Native Hill Farm, which grows a variety of produce in movable greenhouses in Fort Collins, Sandbox developed a similarly mobile solar system on rails.

“None of our agrivoltaic projects look the same,” notes Sandbox Agrivoltaic Development Associate Jack Donovan. “They all have different designs, they’re not cut-and-paste, and they all take a different approach. So, it’s truly agriculture first, and then solar.”

Donovan was involved in agrivoltaic research at CSU before joining Sandbox in 2024. An early pilot tested growing spinach under bifacial solar panels. Yields remained the same as plants in full sunlight, and subsequent tests of semi-transparent solar panels have resulted in increased yields. One problem, however, is that most semi-transparent panels aren’t UL-listed, and therefore difficult to source at scale in the United States.

CSU’s Western Colorado Research Center in Grand Junction is currently testing traditional and semi-transparent panels on a small plot in the 80-acre facility. In summer 2025, CSU Professor and State Viticulturist Horst Caspari oversaw the installation of 85 kilowatts of horizontal agrivoltaics over about 9,000 square feet of chardonnay vines that are sandwiched between control vines on either side. Caspari says he hopes the panels will trap warm air, decrease evaporation, prevent early ripening and offer protection from hail.

The project will continue for at least three years. “We have to go through one two-year cycle before we fully understand the impacts,” says Caspari. “I’m hopeful that two or three of those potential benefits that I mentioned will come true. I know for sure that we will save water. That’s a no-brainer.”

Kominek thinks the future of agrivoltaics in Colorado will trend to cattle, largely because there are 2.8 million cattle in Colorado compared to 400,000 sheep. “There’s just not enough sheep in our country for all the solar arrays that are being built,” he notes. “We’ve brought cows, both beef and dairy, underneath our panels over the years to show people what they do. We’ve heard about other sites around the country and around the world that are incorporating cattle into it. We can do this. It’s possible. It’s just about getting people to do it.”

Brent Huwa, co-founder of Huwa Enterprises, a land reclamation and engineering firm in Keenesburg, is keenly interested in agrivoltaics on cattle ranches. Not only does he have 600 head of Angus cattle on his own ranch in nearby Roggen, but Huwa sees vast potential for solar projects at cattle ranches across the country for Huwa Enterprises.

“There is a benefit to the shade,” says Huwa. “There’s already been a ton of tests done on the value of shade, for cattle, less water intake, better feed efficiency, all of those kinds of things.”

Huwa Enterprises’ own tests have shown that cows and solar can coexist. “We did tests with yearlings, with mama cows with bulls, just to kind of prove out that they weren’t going to tear it up,” says Huwa. The company has since installed agrivoltaics at two cattle ranches in Louisiana; development costs have been comparable to traditional solar.

The primary reason agrivoltaics have yet to gain traction in the cattle industry is a simple lack of information, argues Huwa. “You don’t know what you don’t know,” he says. “You’re not familiar with solar projects and they’re not familiar with cattle.”

Michael LaBroad, Huwa Enterprises’ chief strategy officer, says sheep grazing is more transient than cattle grazing. “The real tactic [with sheep agrivoltaics] isn’t about ranching, it’s about vegetation management,” he says. “Our perspective isn’t one of just vegetation management, it’s about having the duplicity of the land be able to support agriculture. We’re taking ranching land and agricultural land out of the system and just putting sheep on it, which really doesn’t have a net benefit, where at the end of the day with cattle, you have beef, which there’s a huge market for.”

Huwa Enterprises was involved in the construction of Garnet Mesa Solar in Delta County, one of the largest agrivoltaic projects in the state, with newly installed irrigation to support sheep grazing. Slated to be operational in fall 2025, the 80-megawatt array in Delta County on Colorado’s Western Slope won approval after sheep grazing was added to the proposal in summer 2022.

“The county was really concerned about losing irrigated ag land,” says Brian McCurdy, a Montana-based principal of Alluvial Power, owner of Garnet Mesa Solar. “They were really the ones who pushed for the irrigation scope here. I don’t know that we’ve seen another solar project that has something similar. Jack’s is the one that most folks point to, but they just use a drip-hose setup. We have tens of thousands of sprinkler heads that are hung under the rows of modules.”

Alluvial has partnered with Sperry Livestock of Delta for them to graze about 1,000 head of sheep on nearly 400 acres amid the panels. “The Sperrys could have sheep here for many months on end, and so it’s evolved into a bigger piece,” says McCurdy. “We have a full-time farmer on the site who’s focused on irrigation and growing grass.”

McCurdy says he hasn’t seen a larger irrigated agrivoltaic project anywhere, but there’s a reason for that: It’s complicated and expensive. “Our objective is to build and operate power plants, and farming and ranching is adjacent to that through a county requirement,” he explains. “Where it becomes more expensive for the project is if you’re trying to consistently have sheep out there, and certainly if you’re trying to irrigate it.”

For future projects, he adds, “We will probably really work hard to avoid the irrigation scope. It’s not easy.”

AFT’s Kinzer says state policy is the most important factor for agrivoltaic development, but notes that “a perfect example” has yet to emerge. Massachusetts and New York have been aggressive with tax credits. Colorado has offered cash grants, but the $300,000 budget for FY2026 is dwarfed by other states. Washington, by comparison, awarded $4 million in agrivoltaics grants in 2024.

Kominek thinks evaluation criteria from utilities and electric co-ops need to better account for agrivoltaics. “I want to see a 20 percent evaluation criteria around land stewardship within solar arrays, so that as Xcel, as Black Hills, as any of our electric co-ops are putting out bids for building new infrastructure within their network, that they’re also taking a look at how the land is going to be managed,” he says. “How are we creating space for agriculture over time? Then you will see companies competing to figure out how to do that better.”

“We’re putting in this infrastructure,” adds Kominek. “Why don’t we make it multipurpose to begin with, so it can be useful to so many different communities, especially agricultural communities that struggle already financially?”

Online:

• Jack’s Solar Garden: jackssolargarden.com
• Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center: coagrivoltaic.org
• Sandbox Solar: sandboxsolar.com
• Garnet Mesa Solar: garnetmesasolar.com
• American Farmland Trust: farmland.org