Growing food and power on the same land:

California researchers test agrivoltaics

KPBS | August 25, 2026

As California farmers face worsening drought, extreme heat and rising costs, the state is racing to expand solar energy infrastructure. But both agricultural production and solar harvesting depend on one increasingly scarce resource: land.

Researchers at UC Davis are looking at whether combining farming and solar energy could help farmers adapt.

The approach, called agrivoltaics, combines farming below or alongside solar panels. Scientists are studying whether strategically placing panels could provide enough shade to help crops withstand some of the stresses of climate change — while also giving farmers another potential source of income.

At UC Davis, a proof-of-concept site is in its first year of operation and gives researchers a larger setting to test whether agrivoltaics can be applied to typical farms.

Growing in the shade

Graduate researcher Gavin Chaboya points to a row of tomatoes growing near a set of solar panels.

“Where we’re at right now is the second row closest to a west-facing solar panel,” Chaboya says. “We still have some sun scald.”

Sunscald happens when crops are exposed to too much direct sunlight and extreme heat.

The panels are positioned vertically along the field, creating different levels of shade as the sun moves throughout the day. Chaboya compares another row, closer to the panels.

“We’re looking at the row closest to the panel now. You could see leaf development is much smaller, the fruits themselves are tinier, and the sun scalding is a lot less,” he says.

These vertical panels are one of three configurations researchers at the site are using to see how crops respond to different levels of shade and other changes in their growing environment.

Chaboya says the team began studying agrivoltaics roughly five years ago, first using small experimental plots to observe how plants responded to light filtered through different materials.

Chaboya says the California Department of Food and Agriculture provided three years of funding to study both summer and winter crops.

The differences in agricultural outputs are what researchers are trying to understand. Shade from the panels could potentially reduce heat stress on crops, help conserve water and alter conditions in the soil beneath them, according to Chaboya.

He sees the approach as fitting within regenerative agriculture.

“When we’re talking about shielding soil from getting dried up by the sun, protecting plants from burning up in high heat… . If agrivoltaics wasn’t added into this umbrella term of regenerative ag, I don’t know what else it could fall under,” Chaboya says.

State lawmakers last year defined regenerative agriculture to include outcomes that lead to healthier and more resilient farms, while also improving farmer livelihood. California’s outcome-based framework is broad and does not prescribe a specific list of practices.

That definition could matter for agrivoltaics.

If the practice is recognized as regenerative agriculture, it could eventually lead to funding for farmers who want to co-locate solar panels and crops or livestock.

The concept is appealing for another reason: Farmers could potentially use the electricity on their own operations or sell it, creating a secondary source of income from the same piece of land.

While it remains to be determined whether farms classified as regenerative could qualify for grants to support solar energy projects, California is already putting money into research to determine whether agrivoltaics can work at the scale farmers would need.

Read the entire report here.