I grew up hearing stories from my grandparents about how a spring freeze or sudden hail storm could destroy a peach crop. My grandfather worked for years at a local hardware store while maintaining his orchards to patch over the lean years.
Decades ago, I sketched out a plan for retractable covers that could protect orchards from frosts as well as hail. My grandmother appreciated the idea but thought it would be too costly to implement.
But I was not the only one to have that idea. Now, Talbott Farms has installed rotatable solar panels over a patch of orchard that can not only generate electricity but help protect crops from freezes, hail, heat, and water loss.
Recently my family watched the 2025 film Save the Farm, Save the Future, and it opens with an aerial shot of fruit orchards near Palisade’s iconic Mt. Garfield. The film proposes that raised solar panels, adapted for the particulars of the project, can at the same time give farmers a new revenue stream from the electricity generated and provide ancillary benefits to crops and grazing animals.
Agrivoltaics around Colorado
The film discusses six such projects from around Colorado, including the one involving peach orchards. Here is a brief summary of the others:
* Jack’s Solar Garden in Longmont raises various crops under raised solar panels. A video produced by the company and posted on its website quotes Jordan Macknick of the National Renewable Energy Lab: “We are seeing a mutually beneficial relationship between the solar panels and the vegetation. As temperatures get too hot, many plants shut down their photosynthetic activities throughout the middle part of the day. The partial shade from the panels allows that photosynthesis to continue occurring throughout the growing day.”
The shade also reduces evaporative water loss, and the crops, by reducing the immediate temperature, improve solar-panel efficiency.
* The Garnet Mesa Solar project in Delta County plans to allow sheep grazing beneath existing panels “when forage is sufficiently established,” according to the website. As Mark Jaffe’s 2022 article from the Colorado Sun relates, the county originally rejected the solar project and accepted it only once it became ag-friendly. Obviously this sort of heavy-handed government distresses my libertarian sensibilities.
* Huwa Enterprises in Keenesburg applies the grazing idea to cattle that, like sheep, also appreciate the extra shade of solar panels. As Mallory Tope reported last year for the Center for Rural Affairs, Huwa set up a test site in 2023 and subsequently “completed three successful utility-scale projects with cattle grazing and is now helping new and existing solar projects integrate livestock.”
* Thistle Whistle Community Solar in Hotchkiss “is building a 1 MW solar array that produces energy while farming continues underneath it,” according to its website. The site adds, “Beyond the energy benefit, the project is designed as a research and demonstration site for exploring crop performance under partial shade created by the panels in a hot, arid climate like ours.”
* Longboard Power, working with Pfaltzgraff Farms out east in Haxton, has the idea of installing solar panels for use as wind breaks. The farm site explains, “Shelterbelts are vital in windblown areas to protect crops, but living shelterbelts require water and nutrients which compete with crops for these limited resources. Join Tibor Hegedus, designer of the one-of-a-kind dynamic agrivoltaic shelterbelt that produces renewable energy, protects crops, promotes soil moisture retention, and enhances plant water use efficiency.” One idea expressed in the film is that remote solar arrays could power data centers built near them.
Enterprising ag producers
I don’t have a good sense of the economics of such projects, but it does seem obvious that raised solar panels can improve the quality of the land underneath for agricultural and even recreational purposes.
On the other hand, on land that’s now basically dirt and scrub brush, such as you can see driving past Grand Junction on I-70, there’s probably not much point in spending more to raise the panels.
Global warming feeds into the conversation from two angles. Whatever you think about the state mandates, those mandates do propel the state toward more solar-generated electricity. But the trend is not all driven by government. As Our World in Data shows, the costs of solar panels have come down dramatically, from $132 per watt in 1975 (inflation adjusted) to $0.27 in 2024.
On the other side, the use of raised solar panels potentially can help farmers and ranchers adapt to climate change by providing helpful shade and reducing water loss.
As the film conveys, government policies, specifically regarding wage controls and labor regulations, also have caused greater stresses for already-struggling farmers. In general, the film offers insights into various agricultural enterprises in Colorado, whatever you think of the solar angle.
I believe that, even as we continue to burn natural gas and petrol as bridge technologies, eventually we are headed for a world in which some combination of nuclear power, solar, and maybe geothermal and other technologies provide us with abundant energy. It seems like agrivoltaics could play a meaningful role in that future.
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
