$5M grant will fund study of how solar panels can boost crops

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has awarded Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences $5 million to build solar arrays at university farms in Ithaca and the Hudson Valley, enabling research in agrivoltaics - the practice of co-locating food and energy production.

The $5 million grant to CALS will enable planning and development of a 2-acre, 300-kilowatt solar array above high-density apple orchards at the Cornell Hudson Valley Research Laboratoryand a 7-acre, 900-kilowatt solar array at one of the research farms on Cornell's Ithaca campus. The arrays will allow researchers to investigate how solar panel spacing, height, direction and other design considerations impact crop success.

The Hudson Valley project will be the first agrivoltaic research installation above an apple orchard in the United States, said Jared Buono, director of the Hudson Valley Research Laboratory. Similar projects in Europe and Korea over orchards and vineyards have shown promising results, such as solar panels protecting plants from hail and helping plants retain moisture during heat waves, he said.

The panels installed in Hudson Valley will be movable, so they can track the sun to maximize energy production or be adjusted to allow more or less light into orchards when needed. For example, red apples need enough direct light at the end of the growing season to develop their color, Buono said. This year's long, hot season resulted in too much sun and apples developing sunburn, which damages fruit and allows pests and disease to enter, he said.

The researchers will also be looking at how solar panels affect yield, although for growers of fresh table apples (vs. apples used for sauce or juice), yield is not necessarily the highest priority, Buono said.

"A modern, high-density tree will produce 400 fruit, if we let it. But if you're growing finished fruit - table apples - you don't want 400 apples on that little tree. You're going to thin it throughout the year to get maybe 150 perfect fruit," he said. "For a lot of specialty crop types, the yield might actually benefit from a small amount of shade. And that's the sweet spot we're hoping to find."

The Ithaca campus project will be built on a 7-acre plot southeast of the Fleet Services parking lot, said Caroline Marschner, extension associate in the School of Integrative Plant Science's (SIPS) Soil and Crop Sciences Section. The site will host a wide variety of annual and perennial crops, she said.

"The site is not very high-quality farmland, and, in an ideal world, the solar that gets installed would go into this type of marginal land rather than prime farmland," Marschner said. "The project will probably be there for 30 years, so we're trying to plan for maximum flexibility. Our goal is to design something that will be useful for a variety of research questions over a long period of time."

Marschner; Steve Grodsky, assistant professor of natural resources and the environment; and Antonio DiTommaso, SIPS professor and director of the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station, and their colleagues have undertaken agrivoltaics research over the past two years at a private solar site outside Albany owned by Greenbacker, an energy transition-focused investment manager and independent power producer. Initial research from the group found that 2024 yields of radish and radicchio decreased by almost 50%when grown inside the tightly spaced solar array. However, this year's crop of strawberries yielded similarly inside and outside the array, with agrivoltaic strawberry plants growing fewer but larger berries, Marschner said.

The Greenbacker site was built to maximize energy production, but Cornell's agrivoltaic site will be designed to balance both food and energy production. This will likely include two or three different panel spacings and types, including panels that can be moved to vertical to enable tall equipment to drive through, Marschner said.

"The unique part about this is that the system design will enable us to test multiple crops and multiple sun-tracking systems," said Julie Suarez, associate dean and director of translational research programs for CALS. "This will allow us to share the best, independently-verified information with growers across New York. Because if a crop fails, we want it to fail here at a university research farm, and not at a working farm."

Doreen M. Harris, president and CEO of NYSERDA, also announced on Nov. 7 $2 million in grants to four other agrivoltaics projects across New York.

"We are proud to partner with farmers, developers, and research partners to advance projects that support solar as a resource to produce energy in New York State while sustaining agriculture operations for economic growth," Harris said. "By examining different means of integrating agriculture operations and clean energy siting, we will build our understanding of the costs, benefits and market potential of locating two essential industries in the same space."

Krisy Gashler is a writer for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.