July 22, 2025

How Vertical Solar Panels Are Changing Farms in 2025! | EP298

Show Notes
Transcript

Ready to discover why smart solar developers and farmers are choosing agrivoltaics over traditional solar?

Today on the Clean Power Hour, join host Tim Montague and four industry leaders who share real data, proven results, and practical insights on how vertical racking helps farmers achieve superior returns compared to conventional approaches

🎯 Featured Experts:

Helge Biernath - Founder & CEO of Sunzaun
Ian Skor - Founder & CEO of Sandbox Solar
Professor Majdi Abou Najm - UC Davis Researcher
John Langdon - Oregon farmer and "Solar Saves Farms" advocate

Why This Matters to YOU:

For Solar Developers:

✅ 15x higher energy density per square foot with vertical systems

✅ Premium pricing - capture afternoon peak rates up to 62¢/kWh

✅ Lower LCOE through reduced soiling, snow issues, and maintenance

✅ New market access in areas where traditional solar faces opposition

For Farmers & Landowners:

✅ Income diversification without losing agricultural production

✅ 8-12% water savings, reducing operational costs

✅ 120%+ land productivity (energy + agriculture combined)

✅ Enhanced crop resilience through beneficial microclimate creation

For Investors & Financial Professionals:

✅ Proven ROI models with real performance data

✅ Multiple revenue streams from a single land asset

✅ Risk mitigation through diversified income sources

✅ Scalable solutions from pilot to commercial deployment

🎪 Upcoming Events Mentioned:

Solar Farm Summit (August 4-7, Chicago)
California Agrivoltaics Day (November 5, UC Davis)

Connect with Guests

Connect with Tim

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Tim on LinkedIn

Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com

Review Clean Power Hour on Apple Podcasts

The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com

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The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

The Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Please subscribe on your favorite audio platform and on Youtube: bit.ly/cph-sub | www.CleanPowerHour.com | contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com | Speeding the energy transition!

WEBVTT

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Like Majd and so many of the smart people around the world have figured out most plants don't use all that sun.

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In fact, the farmers, the old farmers, will say that the morning sun is growing, sun. The plants usually have some dew on them. They're open to the sun, the flowers, the leaves, the afternoon sun is cooking sun.

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That plant just has to use extra water to stay alive, to stay cool, just like any of us, if we stood out in the sun all day.

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And so if we can manage that sunlight for the health of the plant, the crops or the livestock, and harvest that extra sunlight and sell it as a crop, is the way I look at it.

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Then I think we're past dual use. We're just at a higher level of use of the farmland.

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Are you speeding the energy transition here at the Clean Power Hour, our host Tim Montague, bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization.

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We do too. We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it together. We can speed the energy transition.

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Welcome, to powering agriculture's future.

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Agrivoltaic solutions for sustainable tomorrow. I'm Tim Montague, host of the Clean Power Hour. Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review.

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Tell a friend about the show.

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Today, we're exploring agrivoltaics, combining solar energy production with agricultural activities dual use solar this isn't just about putting solar panels on farms.

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It's about creating systems that address the nexus of energy, food and water, while benefiting both energy production and crop cultivation. Our expert panel includes technical innovators, solar installers, researchers and farmers who are pioneering this field, whether you're looking to diversify farm income, develop dual use solar projects, or just learn more about agrivoltaics, today's discussion will show how agrivoltaics can create a more sustainable future before we get into our panelists. Some quick housekeeping. The event is being recorded, and the recording will be posted to our YouTube channel, as well as to Apple and Spotify and all other audio platforms, starting on Tuesday, the 22nd of July. We invite attendees to ask questions in the Q and A feature of zoom, and we'll answer those both live and at a dedicated Q and A section towards the end of our hour today. So please queue up your questions. We look forward to answering those live, and just know that you will also have an opportunity to book a one on one meeting with both suns on and sandbox solar. There will be a QR code on one of the slides during the presentation. You can also just reach out to me, Tim at cleanpowerhour.com, and I can connect you, of course, to the relevant parties. Without further ado, our panelists are Helge Biernath, founder and CEO of Sunzaun, the vertical racking company, and sunstall, the mechanical installation company.

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Sunzaun is bringing European style vertical solar racking solutions to American markets.

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He and sunstall have 15 years of installation experience and over 1500 projects completed across the United States. Helge is leading the vertical bifacial solar movement in the American agrivoltaics market. He's joined by Ian Skor, founder and CEO of sandbox solar, a Colorado based EPC that has been pioneering agrivoltaics research since 2018 Ian operates the agrivoltaics testing grounds at Colorado State University, and helped and developed spade, a specialized software platform for Modeling energy production and crop yields in agrivoltaic systems.

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Our third speaker is Professor Majdi Abou Najm at UC Davis, who specializes in the nexus of water, energy and food and has 15 years of agrivoltaic research experience. At UC Davis, he leads experimental studies on crop performance under solar installations, and is developing California's first comprehensive agrovoltaic site testing, testing multiple technologies simultaneously. And finally, John Langdon, an Oregon farmer based, sorry, an Oregon based farmer and advocate who.

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Champions the solar saves farms.

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Message John demonstrates how agrivoltaics can provide economic diversification and climate resilience for agricultural operations, bringing practical, real world experience from from implementing solar solutions on working farmland. I want to thank all of our viewers and listeners for being here today.

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It's really an honor to have such an illustrious panel of experts and all of you here viewing and listening. So thank you with that, I'm going to share a presentation that suns on prepared, and I will turn it over to Helge Biernath,

00:05:45.795 --> 00:06:42.380
yeah, good morning everybody, and thank you for joining us. Hopefully, we can bridge a little bit the gap of what agrivoltaics stands for and what it could mean for our farmers here in the United States. So I mean, you see a nice picture here of the cows, you know, roaming around a vertical system. And if we go to the to the next slide, we can see, how did we get to this agrivoltague word? I mean, obviously we have agriculture, and we have the conversion of sunlight into biomass. And then we have the photovoltague side of it, which converts sunlight into electricity. And so people just, you know, combined the words, by the way, Sun stall is the sun at install. So the kind of the same concept, what they used here is agrivoltagues. Why are we talking about this? Tim?

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We have, obviously, a global population which is growing over the next years to probably 9.7 billion or more. You can find different statistics about that.

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And what does that mean? We need more food, we need more energy.

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We need more water. We need everything. And obviously, today, our system is based on fossil fuels, and it's still the largest fuel source, and that's probably not going to be the same in the future. We need to find solutions, to make a change to bring that nexus, which Professor mashti will talk about later, how we can overcome the challenges. So one solution here is the dual land use, using the land for farmland activities and preserving it. So like what we did in the last couple 100 years, but also at the same time generating clean energy. And as you can see here, and check solar garden, which a lot of people have seen the pictures and have been there and and it's beautiful how this is laid out.

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And the chance to diversify the income, when you look at the farming and ranching population, 40% over 60 and probably 40 to 60% of all the businesses have been taken over by the next generation. And the question is, are they interested to really take over these farms, if there is not a real business model, I mean loving the things we've done in the past is great, you know, but there also needs to be a path into the future and a way of generating income, and so agrivoltaics could be the way to make that happen and to support us also, when the with the production of energy. Tim, so what do we have and what do we see today? Obviously, we have fixed tilt systems. We have trackers, which they can all be used, you know, in agrivoltaics.

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And since a short period of time, we have vertical by facial systems. And so they're a little bit new, because we never had the by facial modules in the in the past. And obviously, if you just have one sided modules, then the production efficiency is not as great as if you can produce electricity from both sides. And therefore it took a while before that type of system was kind of developed slash introduced into the market, and that's what we're going to talk about today. Is the vertical bifacial system, as you can see it here, upright. It's vertical.

00:09:25.129 --> 00:10:36.610
Nothing really special about that, but different than the fixed hills with 20 to 45 degrees angle, or the trackers which are following the sun. And so what's, what's, what's different? Obviously, the first picture can can tell you the story already. You don't have to deal with snow. You don't have to deal with soiling. They're easily cleaned by just nature with the runoff, the picture at the bottom. Autumn is a real one in the in the Central Valley, after a couple of months, you got soiling. So you can also see with the first picture, albedo helps snow or other reflective ground coverages. So it's a high albedo system, and we're going to talk about in a second why that's important. And yes, it can produce up to 15 times more if you look at the footprint of the system. So this is because you have a low footprint, therefore you produce a lot of energy per square foot. And here are the curves, and they're real curves from the Central Valley.

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When you look at the upper right, the green one is an east, west facing system, the vertical system. The blue one is a south, north facing vertical system.

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And then next to it, you got a fixed tilt system. So typically, the green one should be also more like a camel hump, but because there is some shading in the area. That's why it looks a little strange. But to to explain what really happens here, it's clear you got a hump in the morning and you got a hump in the afternoon, and we have, you know it, with the second graph shown here, the the California duck curve, which is the typical curve if you have a penetrated market. And it shows you that in the afternoon there is the highest demand, and obviously a higher price, you know, for electricity, which is exactly what you can produce within a vertical system. Then because fixed hills or others, which are peaking at high noon, they're getting, you know, curtailed these days, because there's just so much production at that time, and no not enough demand to cover that so on the on the left side here, you see also the difference in in peak rates in the summer, up to 62 cents, you know, from four to nine again, in the afternoon, and in the winter, up to 50 cents. Where you can see that the off peak rates are lower, so very important for the business model, which we're going to talk about later on. Yeah. How can it be used? Obviously, as we've seen in Europe already, crops that's standard, all kinds of crops, hay and other low growing crops. Then, and Ian is going to talk about the application in the center with greenhouses and grazing and fencing. One system is being tested and run at Rutgers University from last year, so they're using it with cattle. Yeah, please. After this webinar, if you have questions, if you want to talk about your ideas, projects, talk to us. You can see it up here a picture in a vineyard. You can see it also with corn. So there are all kinds of applications. Just reach out to us and let's have a discussion about it.

00:13:03.750 --> 00:13:41.039
All right, thank you, Helge. And you see here you've got Jack Donovan at sandbox with the QR code, Tia Haines from sunstall and Annika Svenson from sunstall. So feel free to take a photo of those while we're here live, or you will get an email with contact information as well, so you can look for that. I'm going to stop sharing and invite Ian Skor to tell us what he's up to at sandbox in Colorado.

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There we go. So here we have a vertical solar Sunzaun installation at CSU from last year. It was installed and we grew corn. Corn was chosen to get a fresh, quick growing crop and kind of a commodity relationship. And you can see the minimal amount of land space that's used among this corn and the corn planters were able to seed right up until the solar panels. This is the site at CSU.

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This is up in Fort Collins, about an hour north of Denver.

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We also have semi transparent panels researched here in a fixed tilt orientation. You want to learn more. We do have a web page on our website where you can look at the active production of this site, but you can see the general layout of the vertical solar installation here with the corn. Here, I wanted to show a video of the actual operations of the site.

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So we have an actual tractor here harvesting corn. Believe this is in the fall time, and I'll play this video now of just showing kind of the general operation so we can seed harvest crops within these kind of environments, which makes it really impactful. And incredible. So it can be achievable. There's a lot of different operations, operability with the vertical solar, and this is what we can achieve here. So many people are wondering, what's the production difference between fixed tilt and Single Axis Tracking and the vertical solar? Well, now we have several agrivoltaic sites in Colorado, some tracking, some fixed and some vertical. And so we're just starting to peer into this and get actual results of what's happening. And so generally, overall, we're seeing a, of course, dip in overall yield between single axis, fixed tilt and vertical. So it's about a 20 to 30% loss from the vertical to single axis in an annual yield in Colorado for these specific systems. From that there's about an 18% 1515, 18% loss between the fixed and vertical. However, as Helge mentioned, the yield per square foot is really what's interesting here. So if you dive in and look into actual yield per square foot Ratio, Vertical blows everything else out of the water. I mean, it's almost more than 30% more than fixed and single access and potentially more than that. Those are the initial findings we're seeing, and that's what makes vertical incredible, because it really maximizes the square footage potential, and gaining the most out of that square footage, also with vertical, there's potential for cost reductions, because it is a pretty simple installation.

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Our installs went very smooth, very quickly, and a lot less steel to install. And so we forecast that those cost reductions are pretty significant. Here I wanted to show that native Hill Farm what's capable as well. So this is an example of our single access tracker that's actually mobile. So this is within a one hour period the single access tracker was installed at a local CSA farm in Fort Collins, and so we're actually able to move the single access tracker array from plot to plot once a season, so this farmer can continue to harvest underneath those greenhouses that you see there.

00:17:07.669 --> 00:17:36.250
Those greenhouses are not traditional greenhouses in the sense of having HBC lighting and cooling, but more like high tunnels, meaning they extend the growing season for the farmer, and they can compost and do regenerative agriculture on their site at the same time. So these are the capabilities of agrovoltaics. Which is really special is doing that dual use.

00:17:32.185 --> 00:17:52.030
Here we have our Spring Hill greens installation. This has been site in operation for several years now, and so now we're getting real data. And what's special about this site is the reflectance from the greenhouse film that you see.

00:17:48.170 --> 00:18:52.714
It's very reflective, which increases the albedo and by faciality of the solar panels and the production. So due to those albedo increases, we wanted to start to see, can we start to model the actual production of these vertical solar panels, and with what kind of accuracy we see that as a huge void in the market currently, with some softwares like helioscope and others that are out there that you may be able to use it's been really difficult to model the accuracy of vertical solar and so now we bit may well tackle that solution using spade and sand modeling through NREL to study the albedo effects and the bifaciality factor of the solar panels. And we can get within a 5% error from the field production to our actual modeled production. So here's our model production. To the right was about 29,000 kilowatt hours for the year. And then on the left you can see our monitoring data.

00:18:48.381 --> 00:19:33.285
We got 29,000 kilowatt hours in 2023 so that's where our numbers come from. The financials that you see below is that we're still toying with and we still need to determine the ultimate costs. So that's just an example, but mostly wanted to highlight the fact that we can actually start modeling the production of these vertical systems with pretty high level accuracy. So spade is a tool we developed. We developed because that common question of, What can we grow in these unique scenarios, especially in agrivoltaics, we have all these different designs coming to fruition and different climates with different potential crops.

00:19:33.352 --> 00:20:56.319
How can we hone in on the perfect pairing of dual use land? And so that's where spade comes in. So spade, we can model any kind of PV design anywhere in the world, and model the microclimate underneath the solar panels. So here you can see a modeled system from the CSU site, and you can see the overall average irradiance underneath and on the solar panels. And. Run this average irradiance in par levels, we can infer what kind of crops are going to be the optimal selection here. So corn is a pretty good one, because it needs a lot of sunlight, and the fact that the vertical solar panels do not shade all that much in this environment allows that corn to grow pretty significantly. So this is example of kind of a report and output that spade has. We were able to model whole sites, and we can model the whole irradiance and determine what kind of crop production works across these multi megawatt agrovoltaic sites. And so those are the potential services we offer. We were able to start modeling vertical solar so if you're interested in seeing what that potential impact is in your environment, we can model that system for you and go from there. So that's just a general overview. I'll kick it back to Tim from here.

00:20:58.059 --> 00:21:21.557
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00:22:03.660 --> 00:23:20.519
Thank you, Tim and hello everyone. So I'm a soil physicist, hydrologist and the systems engineer. I spent my career designing and developing sustainable solutions. So from Sustainable Agriculture to sustaining our soil and water to sustainable resource management overall. Working on those long term sustainability targets of our systems led me to studying the nexus between water, energy and food. And I've said systems already a few times, and then you'll see why. To me, a system is is important, because you look at the farm, and it's a whole combination of the climate or the environment that you have, the soil that you have, how much water is there, the socio economics and the infrastructure around you. And each system is unique. Some of those systems are water stressed. Others are heat and environmentally stressed. Some have soil and plant health related issues. Some are socio economically stressed, some with all, or some with a few of those altogether. But they all thrive to be resilient to the stresses they face. And this is where agrivoltaics come to me.

00:23:21.119 --> 00:28:02.279
Agrivoltaics the best way to define it is it's the most integrated way of sharing and harvesting the sun. The sun being probably the only really sustainable resource in our farm, and sharing the sun means if there is more sun in your farm than how much a plant requires. Giving your crops all the sun that is out there is actually going to cost you more water. And if the sun is too much, like the few hot summers that we have faced, and yeah, we have, we have experiencing in California Central Valley, this can cause something beyond an extra water cost, and it can stress your plants, sometimes to a level where the yields are reduced. Sharing the sun is good for the crops. It can save water, and it can lead to an overall increase in the productivity of land. So how is that? The way we work with agrivoltaic system as we design them, is we start with where you are, how much sun is there, what crops are of interest. And based on that, we can define an amount of sun that can be harvested for solar production. This creates, with the shade that the solar panels will bring a favorable microclimate that would actually lead to additional savings, including water savings. We've been experimenting with a few crops here at my experimental site at UC Davis, we worked with tomatoes and with peppers, and we've seen that the water use efficiency have increased actually. Day in tomatoes, despite a reduction in yields and what water use efficiency means is we were able to produce more tomatoes per a unit mass or a unit volume of water, as compared to the control which is doing agriculture, conventional agriculture, they helped boost the water use efficiency by somewhere between eight to 12% for tomatoes. For peppers, the yields actually were not impacted, and this means that we're able to produce the same peppers as under conventional agriculture, plus all the energy that is produced is going to be extra. This is great. Even with 30% reduction in tomatoes from our experimental facility. Doing an overall socio economic analysis, showed that the land overall produced more per acre with agrovoltagues, when you add the potential for energy generation and the potential from the agricultural production. So remember that when you're thinking about agrivoltaics, a yield reduction does not necessarily mean bad news, because what you're looking at is you are producing water. We are sorry you're producing food and energy on the same plot. So adding both would give you your overall efficiency. And while the highest efficiency you can look at in conventional systems is 100% you can get the best deals ever if you produce, if you you know, follow the best agricultural practices, and you can get the highest amount of kilowatt hours if you pack the land with as many panels as the land can take. And this will give you 100% but think about it this way, if you get 70% of your agricultural yield because you put 50% solar panel densities, you are at 120% meaning, if you own 10 acres, you are receiving the productivity of 12 in terms of a combined effect of energy and food. One very exciting thing, because, before I hand it back to Tim, is we are super excited about building our first agrivoltaic research facility here at UC Davis, which I hope will be completed before the end of this year. We will have multiple arrays of different systems operating simultaneously at the same time, there will be vertical solar panels. There will be single access trackers and fixed technologies with bifacial and with spectral splitting solar panels, all operating within a nine acre agrovoltaic research facility here at UC Davis, and we will be able to test how different technologies react to different crops and different practices.

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Back to you. Tim,

00:28:05.819 --> 00:28:13.799
great. Thank you so much, Professor, Majdi. And last but not least, John Langdon, Oregon farmer, welcome.

00:28:14.400 --> 00:28:15.539
Thank you, Tim. My

00:28:15.539 --> 00:29:11.240
name is John Langdon. I said Oregon farmer, and I've had the opportunity to look at solar near some of our land for a number of years, and we started to pay attention to what was happening with sheep grazing. A lot of the different configurations as we watched the solar panel efficiency continue to evolve, we also saw different tracking systems. We saw what was happening with sheep grazing, and we started to look at the options from a farmer's standpoint on how can we produce both food and energy are the two greatest human needs, and farmers are producers. So how can we produce both? And now I'm at a stage in life where I think producing both not only is the thing to do. It makes the most sense. It's an honor to contribute to the energy needs.

00:29:07.032 --> 00:29:28.928
So what I really like about vertical is it is the least requirement adaptation for the farmer, because the spit spacing can configure. Like Majdi said, what crops have been done historically. What crops are of an interest for a future market?

00:29:24.291 --> 00:29:59.452
And so from a farmer standpoint, when you're looking at dual use, it is the best way, or the cleanest, simplest way, to look at how can I use the equipment I have? How can I grow the crops that I know will work and make it work for dual use. And we've seen some of those vertical projects. We saw one in near Salzburg, Austria that was so beautiful, it started to look like the fields that were open were an underuse. We saw lines.

00:29:55.173 --> 00:30:08.083
We saw interconnection power lines that. And and that field looks so good, it was kind of like it's a waste not to be harvesting that extra sunlight.

00:30:08.153 --> 00:31:07.991
So in any business you have resources, in a farm, it's soil, water and light. Those are your three natural resources. And water is continuing to be something that well, there's an old farmer saying that whiskey is for drinking the water for fighting over so that's where we're at with water. So any savings or efficiency use in water can be massive for the farmer, but for the neighbors, for the community, for the greater good. So we see these agrivoltaics, almost like waterless irrigation, because they're saving that much water, and the understanding of how the water is being used and precision in irrigation systems, and just looking at water use with the revenue from the solar projects on the land gives you some revenue to maybe do some precision irrigation, so that helps with the water that way.

00:31:03.498 --> 00:31:16.265
And then the shade, whether it's a little shade or a lot of shade, depends on what you're trying to do and what the the solar particular project is.

00:31:16.336 --> 00:31:47.359
However, water is being looked at differently or in a new way because of solar shade, and I think that's fantastic. And then the sun is the only resource that we have in abundance. We have extra sunlight like Majdi and so many of the smart people around the world have figured out most plants don't use all that sun. In fact, the farmers, the old farmers, will say that the morning sun is growing, sun.

00:31:42.723 --> 00:31:51.567
The plants usually have some dew on them. They're open to the sun, the flowers, the leaves.

00:31:51.638 --> 00:33:48.532
The afternoon sun is cooking, sun. That plant just has to use extra water to stay alive, to stay cool, just like any of us, if we stood out in the sun all day. And so if we can manage that sunlight for the health of the plant, the crops or the livestock, and harvest that extra sunlight and sell it as a crop, is the way I look at it, then I think we're we're past dual use. We're just at a higher level of use of the farmland, and the more farmers that understand this opportunity and work from everybody that's held in the racking systems. We visited Tia there in central California, and we saw the demo sites. I think we're at a stage where the configurations and the science has been largely figured out. Now it's time for the farmers to be educated, and that's the message behind solar saves farms. Is a curiosity statement to get farmers to say, What do you mean? How does that work? So they can step forward, come to the table and talk about all the different cases and and use options for solar compatibility and solar dual use situation. So what I want to say is, for American farms for the last 200 years, small ones go away. You either have to become big, which heads towards corporate farms and investment company farms, or you have to have a niche, and you have to think differently. And I think solar, whether it's electrifying the farm or dual use cropping fields, I think it's a niche that more and more farmers really need to be exposed to in a positive way so they can come to the table and understand how it can help their farms, all these great people like all of you on this webinar, the hard stuff's been figured out.

00:33:48.604 --> 00:34:13.139
Figured out, which is, will it work? Now it's time to make it work and have those examples of successes, so we can have other farmers go, oh, okay, I get it, and then the community understands, and everybody has a level of acceptance and encouragement to these projects when they see how great it can all truly be. So that's what I have to say.

00:34:14.340 --> 00:34:17.536
Tim, awesome.

00:34:14.340 --> 00:34:54.621
Thank you so much. So we have a lot of questions from our audience, and of course, to collectively, we could talk all day about this topic. I will. I want to set the table a little bit with our audience that when you're talking about agrivoltaics and asking questions about the ROI for example, or the row spacing, all of this is very geographically specific. When it comes to permitting, it's HJ specific authority having jurisdiction, and so to the extent possible, if you have questions, be specific about a geography.

00:34:50.431 --> 00:34:54.621
Because Helge works nationally.

00:34:54.693 --> 00:34:59.168
He's done installations in, I'm guessing, more than 30. States.

00:34:59.239 --> 00:35:02.579
How many states have you done installations in?

00:35:03.420 --> 00:35:06.659
Actually, 38 you know, from Massachusetts.

00:35:06.659 --> 00:35:18.016
So excellent. Um, but I did want to, we had a few technical questions about East West versus north south. You know, this is your major question with vertical racking.

00:35:18.085 --> 00:35:56.199
Do you put the rows north south and benefit from the East West sunlight, or do you put the rows east west and benefit from more southern exposure? And of course, it'll depend on your latitude, where you are and what you're trying to do with the land. And as I explained to Craig privately, when you do the East West, you're going to have to increase the row spacing because the panels are going to cast more shade. But Helge, can you give our listeners a better or a more detailed explanation of how you might optimize around east, west versus north, south?

00:35:57.219 --> 00:36:21.498
I mean, you touched on it. Tim, already, it's a question of the project side and the region and and the requirements of the crop, but also a question of, How can I sell the electrons in the best way? I mean, I showed the graph right if there's a high demand for afternoon electrons and I can get a better price, then maybe I should do it that way.

00:36:21.498 --> 00:36:44.259
So, I mean, it's really, really project specific, and again, specific to the to the crop and the needs of the farmer. I give you an example. So we built the first vertical system, like, three years ago at our storage in Visalia, California. And it was really funny, because after 45 minutes an hour, a farmer stopped and looked at, you know, what are you guys doing there?

00:36:44.259 --> 00:37:02.759
What is this? And we're like, Yeah, this is a vertical solar system. And he's like, ah, that's kind of cool, because I don't need to take my trees out right before for a fixed Hill system, I had to take the trees out, you know. And now I can keep my trees but and still have a vertical solar system.

00:37:02.759 --> 00:37:41.199
Obviously, it's not going to produce as much, you know, as the perfectly situated system, but hey, it's going to produce something from you so again, it depends on the location, it depends on the project, the crop, you know. So, so there, there is no golden bullet, and probably we haven't figured out all the different configurations, because they're just too many crops out there, right? And too many regions. The Midwest is different than Massachusetts, you know, with with berries, than it is in California and and as we heard, you know, for some regions, water might be an issue. For some others, it's not an issue.

00:37:37.759 --> 00:37:51.998
So, I mean, we really have to talk about a specific project to to provide the best fit and best solution. And, I mean, Ian has the tools, you know, to do exactly that, maybe, and you want to, yeah, I'll

00:37:52.300 --> 00:38:20.099
add in, I'll add in, like, if you have a low sun angle, north, south might, might make more sense, because you can capture more that sunlight on that low sun angle throughout the entire day. So more of the northern climates, especially as you don't have snow soiling, you're going to get a lot of benefit from that lack of snow soiling, those low sun angles to probably do more north, south, vertical, solar we just need more installations out there to really pin those benefits. But we can start modeling those now

00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:37.460
through slash coming back, or slash coming back, to John's point. You know, if I don't need the afternoon sun, maybe I want the panels, you know, to be installed in any to face east west, so that I can shadow, you know, the strawberries or other crop, right?

00:38:38.480 --> 00:38:57.760
And I think vertical solar also kind of brings the new mindset of, where can I strategically put solar panels, even if it's not optimally oriented, it's per square foot a higher yield. And so you can really pack it into very unique places that you know previously you might not have been able to pack in solar, put solar, and

00:38:59.139 --> 00:39:09.059
it starts with a standard fence. I mean, yes, you're gonna say it's the most expensive fence ever, which is absolutely correct, you know.

00:39:06.059 --> 00:39:13.918
But it's the one fence which actually has an ROI, whatever the ROIs may be, you know, but it has one, and

00:39:15.239 --> 00:39:40.099
it could be a windrow as well, you know. So we have a question from Matt about operating facilities at scale in California. Are there any examples that any of you can give us of larger scale agrivoltaics? I mean, when you look at the nation, United States, the majority of agrivoltaics is sheep grazing.

00:39:35.298 --> 00:40:08.219
But when it comes to raising crops on solar farms. That's a much smaller slice of the pie, and that's really where vertical solar unlocks a huge opportunity, because you can run more traditional farm equipment and still get direct sunlight on crops that require a lot of sunlight. So. So what is the state of the state of agrivoltaics and and especially vertical solar, but any kind of agrivoltaics when it comes to at scale?

00:40:09.360 --> 00:40:36.199
Yeah, at scale, we're starting to see, I think a lot of developers move in that direction. I know pivot energy claims that they're all their projects involve some aspect of agrivoltaics. And there's the solar farm Summit coming up in Chicago, doing its third year. And anyone interested in learning more about all the various research and pilot projects that are happening nationwide, that's a great congregation to learn more about the projects at scale.

00:40:37.940 --> 00:40:45.219
Ourselves at sandbox solar, we're starting to implement more agrovoltagues at scale, a couple 100 kilowatt projects for CSU.

00:40:45.219 --> 00:40:57.340
And so I think we're starting to be in this evolution of the industry, where it went from concept and research to pilot projects, and now we're just breaching out of those pilot projects to expand commercially.

00:40:58.840 --> 00:41:07.079
And that solar farm, let me just give the dates of the solar farm Summit. That's August, four to seven in Chicago. And I think the URL is solarfarmsummit.com,

00:41:08.099 --> 00:41:12.360
Helge. Yeah.

00:41:08.099 --> 00:41:12.360
Mostly, is there another Sacramento?

00:41:12.360 --> 00:41:29.059
No, I was, I was going to say that. I'm hoping that by the end of this year, we can say that the UC Davis 200 KW system will be operational, and hopefully we'll start testing winter crops or summer crops from the start of 2026

00:41:31.159 --> 00:41:44.559
John, it's in the proposal state, and a lot of I think the future is agrivoltaics. For most projects, even larger ones, we just have to build a few and show the world or show the nation the world has seen some.

00:41:45.460 --> 00:42:05.340
We do have a question from one listener about corn. Corn is a huge swath of the Midwest. It is corn and beans, but corn is quite tall and can can you address the viability of vertical racking with quite tall crops.

00:42:05.940 --> 00:42:12.719
Yeah, this will be our first year studying the actual PV production with corn around it.

00:42:13.079 --> 00:42:30.679
The system didn't get PTO until I think just after that harvesting video naturally. So we'll have more data on that here soon. I think raising the panels you know how you can probably speak to that. But anything can be designed, engineered, as I demonstrated from the mobile tracking system.

00:42:31.099 --> 00:42:43.659
I think that's what agrivoltaics has shown the last few years in terms of a lot of unique pilot projects. And so now it's time to put it, time to model it and put it into practical use cases.

00:42:44.739 --> 00:43:06.599
Yeah, adding to that, I mean, we're by far at the end of the development. I'm thinking, Hey, how about adding the irrigation system to a vertical solar array, or whatever else is needed for the farming operation. John and I, we discussed, you know, what about automation down the road?

00:43:06.599 --> 00:43:43.539
What about, you know, the electrical equipment we need to charge farming equipment. I mean, it's going to happen, and it doesn't make any sense to go back to the bar in three miles, you know, every day to get the equipment charged, so we need the electrons out there. So that could be another application of just creating your lid to recharge the batteries of the electrical equipment overnight so that you can operate it the next day. I mean, we are evolving as as we speak. You know that whole agrovoltaics application. And

00:43:43.300 --> 00:44:59.800
if I may add, I just want to remind everyone that we're talking about a system when we're talking about agrovoltaics. Studying in the Midwest. I'm a boiler maker. I studied at Purdue, so I I know all about coal and soybean and the we have to remember that this is only a limited time season, whereas the solar panels are producing 365, days in a year. Yes, the cone is tall, and yes, it can take part of the efficiency from those vertical solar panels. And yes, it might be taking it in the period, which is where most of the Sun is during summer. But if you think about it from a systems perspective, this land, if it was conventional agriculture, it's not going to produce anything until the next season, whereas, if it has those agrovoltaic arrays, your secondary crop. Your kilowatt hours are being generated every single day, and as Helge said, there are multiple ways of using those electrons, from selling them to the grid, all the way to recharging your electric tractors to having your own energy generating value add facilities.

00:45:00.960 --> 00:46:27.980
We have lots of questions about the economics, and there's no simple way to frame this, because everything is so site specific and crop specific. But to set the table a little bit, one of the trends that we see in the United States is that farmers can make more money leasing their land to solar developers. Okay, here in the Midwest, you can triple your income leasing your land to a solar developer, but that means that the land is being converted to a solar farm, and rural communities don't necessarily like that, and there is substantial pushback. Granted, it's only one to 2% of the landscape, so in the greater scheme of things, it's a small percentage of the landscape in the future. Now, with innovations like vertical racking, we have the opportunity to say to farmers, we'd love to lease your land, but we'd like you to continue to crop the land. We're going to take a small portion of the land for vertical solar generate a cash crop from photons, and then you can continue to cash crop, whatever that is that you're cropping. But at a 10,000 foot level, I guess, can our panelists speak to what talking points lay people and developers and other energy professionals start to use in conversations with colleagues and with landowners who are trying to figure this out rightfully so.

00:46:28.400 --> 00:46:44.619
And you know, we just don't know what we don't know. And of course, they can contact sandbox and and start running their projects through spade and getting some details. But at a high level, what do you say to people that they should share with their colleagues?

00:46:45.219 --> 00:47:50.559
Yeah, from our experience successfully installing for several different farmers in our area, the discussion has always been around, what's the ideal location or what's the ideal objective, I should say, and that usually spurs just an open ended discussion with the farmer about, you know, what crops they're considering what, and just kind of workshopping from there on, what can work so that was more of a, you know, local customization approach on the larger scale, I've less experience, but I imagine it's a very similar discussion just about, What are the goals of the farm? How can we maximize this opportunity on the farmland and design a system, whether it's single access tracker, fixed tilt, raised system, vertical solar, or any of the above, or between what kind of system works best for their ideal outcome? You know, you could even split the land in half and do traditional solar on one half and agrivoltaics on the other. I think there's endless possibilities to truly unlocking a solution that works for the farm.

00:47:51.219 --> 00:48:11.639
Let me speak to that a little bit. I think what agrivoltaics has brought to the farmer world is a new message, which whether it's the developer, the land man, whoever's coming to you now, if it's understood, there's a genuine spirit that the conversation, the first question to the farmer is, I think I have a way to make your farm better.

00:48:11.699 --> 00:48:37.280
Would you like to listen? And that hasn't been the message historically for a lot of reasons, but also I just think that we are now at a stage where farmers it's all about getting more efficiency, more efficient, bigger equipment, those type of things, whether it's electrifying equipment and having electricity in the field.

00:48:31.940 --> 00:48:39.800
I think it's as simple as you know, American farm has been going away for a long time.

00:48:40.159 --> 00:49:29.539
There's an economic viability point where your farm is no longer economically viable. And so if you can have a situation where you can go to those farmers and say, hey, I want to talk to you about this, and I think I have a way to make your farm better, and you can look at the future, because if, as a farmer, if, if you hang too tight to the past, you'll be part of the past. You have to look to the future. And so what I think we're seeing now is more and more farmers saying that they can look at this in a way to how does it work for my farm, like for our situation, we have three, a small, medium, a large project proposed, and it's all, all told, it's about 15% of our farm. So it's has to be part of the farm, not just this or that.

00:49:30.019 --> 00:50:10.920
Now, what you said, Ian, was, sometimes every farmer has a piece of dirt that's not very good. Put that in solar. Now I have those innovation dollars from that revenue to go over here to field a, because field B just while being solar, harvesting the sun. But now I have some resources do something special with field a. So there's lots of different ways, once the farmer understands, to come at it from the mindset of, how can I make my farm better? How can I sustain my future with this farm? How can. Set up the next generation with this option, and what are my options as far as hardware and plans? And I think that's where we're at. Finally, in this space,

00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:15.059
may I add a quick comment on that, please?

00:50:15.599 --> 00:50:36.320
Yeah, so one thing about agrovoltague is it removes the binary the binary system, so it's not either zero or one without agrivoltaics, as you said, you have to choose between continuing with going with the example you mentioned, continuing with corn, or set give your land to a developer.

00:50:36.500 --> 00:51:46.900
Get three times how much you make out of the land, but transform this land completely to a utility solar facility can provide a middle ground, and this is where I'm hoping that developers and farmers will will push for more innovation. How about giving the farmer 2.5 times how much they produce? And the farmer will have to continue in planting corn losing some of this land for the solar right of way and other facilities. Let's say they produce 80% of the yield. So that's point eight plus 2.5 this is more than three times they have produced 3.3 times by combining both agrovolta, I mean energy generation and agriculture at the same time. So my point here is there can always be creative way that looks at land as the main resource, how much sun can be harvested, and what would be a favorable socio economic or economic formula where developers will be happy and at the same time, farmers will be happy and can continue to produce food while also producing kilowatt hours.

00:51:48.159 --> 00:52:13.690
Hey guys, are you a residential solar installer doing light commercial but wanting to scale into large C&I solar? I'm Tim Montague. I've developed over 150 megawatts of commercial solar, and I've solved the problem that you're having you don't know what tools and technologies you need in order to successfully close 100 KW to megawatt scale projects.

00:52:13.762 --> 00:52:21.909
I've developed a commercial solar accelerator to help installers exactly like you.

00:52:17.690 --> 00:52:43.585
Just go to cleanpowerhour.com click on strategy and book a call today. It's totally free with no obligation. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate you listening to the pod, and I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Go to clean power hour and click strategy today. Thanks so much.

00:52:39.367 --> 00:52:59.079
I have a question from the audience about the cost of vertical solar Helge. You have lots of experience with different racking types, but for our energy professional audience, how does vertical solar fall in that spectrum of cost per watt?

00:52:59.619 --> 00:53:47.260
I mean, obviously it's a question of volume and size, right? But today, it's definitely more expensive than a standard fixed tilt racking system, just because you have more foundations per module. So that's relatively easy to see that, and therefore you have more material and therefore it's more expensive. But given the bigger modules, the higher wattage output we're seeing, you know, these days, I mean, that's becoming less and less a factor, and obviously, with more volume and more application, new designs and and more research can be done, and costs will come down. So I'm not concerned about that, especially not in the market right now, where we don't know what the costs are

00:53:47.260 --> 00:53:50.559
tomorrow. So it's the changing landscape these days.

00:53:51.280 --> 00:53:51.760
Sure,

00:53:52.960 --> 00:54:56.920
we have six minutes left and we are going to stop on time. We have a plethora of questions. Thank you so much to all the listeners for the questions. We're not going to get to all your questions today, but rest assured, you can get your questions answered. And I will put the QR codes on screen here momentarily so that you can book a time with sunzaun or sandbox solar. And in the meantime, I wonder if we should just ask our panelists, what are the most important questions that you get? Because obviously, we have a limited audience here today, but you're you're in your daily lives, talking to people day in and day out, about agrivoltaics, I would love to hear from each of you What is one or two questions that you think we energy professionals can and should be able to answer.

00:54:56.920 --> 00:55:09.407
I can start if, if you want them. The question that I get most is, will it work for my land? And this brings me back to a point I raised earlier. Each system is unique.

00:55:09.481 --> 00:55:22.637
We start by saying that if you have more sun than what your crop needs, agrivoltaics is looks like a very viable option, but let's talk more details.

00:55:18.474 --> 00:56:00.099
How's your water situation, how's your soil health? What crops are you interested in? Are you looking at moving into crops that, with the shade induced panels, those will become an option, whereas they are not an option. Now, there are so many things that can spin from the specificity of each project at the uniqueness of each land. We talk about soil, we talk about water, we talk about different crops, we talk about the environment, and then we start talking about the different systems that should work under those conditions.

00:56:00.340 --> 00:56:47.079
Just to add on, you know, your question about cost, you know, is a typical question, especially when people are coming from the solar side, and they don't, they just forget, you know what, most you just alluded to, that it's a system, right? And there are so many other components which can benefit you from, okay, less water consumption, and therefore also less cost on the water side that you cannot just, you know, look at it from a cost perspective. You need to look at it from the benefit perspective, and then look at the overall picture and at the overall economics. That makes sense. I mean that what you do on with any investment, right? You're not just looking singular at one, one specific item. No, you look at the whole system. So I totally agree with that.

00:56:48.159 --> 00:57:02.458
This is not an easy calculus to do, both for the panelists or the audience, and there are so many nuances when it comes to ag and solar.

00:56:57.518 --> 00:57:09.239
So please reach out to us. Reach out to me. Tim, at Clean Power Hour, we'll have the contact information for all of the speakers in a follow up email.

00:57:09.298 --> 00:57:13.259
We are posting the recording.

00:57:09.298 --> 00:57:17.759
You have the QR code to book a meeting with sandbox or suns on.

00:57:13.259 --> 00:57:28.518
So truly, it's through dialog that you're going to benefit the most come to the solar farm Summit. There's also an event at UC Davis. Who would like to tell us about that event in November?

00:57:25.219 --> 00:57:28.518
Go ahead.

00:57:29.539 --> 00:57:41.902
Yeah. So we have the third agrivoltaics California agrable takes day at UC Davis, and mostly that's on the fifth of November, correct?

00:57:37.351 --> 00:57:54.039
Yes. And we probably have an afternoon prior to that to see the facility Majdi was talking about, and get together and discuss, you know, how can we solve the water, food and energy nexus?

00:57:55.059 --> 00:57:57.219
I look forward to seeing you all in Davis.

00:57:58.300 --> 00:57:59.320
It's going to be great.

00:58:00.820 --> 00:58:28.811
I wish we had more time, but unfortunately, we don't, and I just want to thank our panelists for making time for us today. It's great to have so many experts and passionate promoters of agrivoltaics in our midst. Thank you to our listeners and viewers for coming to the event, and please check out all of their content, including this recording at cleanpowerhour.com and with that, I'll say, See you in Chicago in August, hopefully.

00:58:25.079 --> 00:58:31.219
Let's grow agrivoltaics. I'm Tim Montague. Thank you so much, everybody.

00:58:33.079 --> 00:58:35.420
Thank you everyone. Thank you. You.

How Vertical Solar Panels Are Changing Farms in 2025! | EP298

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