Farmer''s Guide to Going Solar
The Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) is researching the opportunities and trade-offs of agrivoltaics. This guide helps answer some questions that farmers may have about going solar
Farmers can benefit from solar energy in several ways—by leasing farmland for solar; installing a solar system on a house, barn, or other building; or through agrivoltaics. Agrivoltaics is defined as agriculture, such as crop production, livestock grazing, and pollinator habitat, located underneath solar panels and/or between rows of solar panels.
There is significant opportunity to produce large amounts of solar energy on farmland. Agricultural land in the U.S. has the technical potential to provide 27 terawatts of solar energy capacity. This is a quarter of the total U.S. solar energy capacity of 115 TW. Only 0.3% of farmland is expected to be used for solar energy by 2035.
Economically, agrivoltaics offer farmers the opportunity to create dual-revenue streams from their land. According to the Ag Economy Barometer, a survey by Purdue University and CME Group, 58% of farmers reported being offered annual payments of $1,000 or more per acre to lease their land for solar projects.
Its PV capacity was 2137 megawatt and it increased to 3104 megawatts by July 2020 with yet another 2801 Megawatt to be added recently. The photovoltaic plant's construction began in January 2015, and it began its operation in June 2016 with 160 Megawatt of panels, making it Chile's largest solar plant at the time.
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