Specialty cut flower grower here. Backyard scale, but we're profitable and have received some grants so that means we have had a USDA relationship for a couple years. The rep I've talked to and am closest with is skeptical of agrivoltaics due to past dealings with solar companies (not sure what she means). There doesn't seem to be enough reliable public data to make it seem like the win-win-win we want it to be. In their mind, you're adding a non-ag industry to the land and that could have downstream consequences in a generation. Maybe you're scheming to get the land re-zoned for light industrial; I honestly have no idea what they're thinking, but they're averse toward it.
Most flowers in 7b don't want extreme sun. We use shade cloth frequently, so solar coverage would be fine and of course have the energy co-production. Cut flowers aren't harvested mechanically at our scale, so we wouldn't have to worry about tractor access.
Meanwhile, more and more food is produced under cover for a lot of good reasons. Polytunnels, glass houses. You might get some summer shade from solar but what about season extension at the beginning of spring/end of fall? Depending on your crop and location, that could mean 4-8 extra weeks a year. What if you do geothermal energy generation for the tunnel? Now you can grow through the winter and not need the same footprint as solar. That's more appealing to me.
Anyway, I'm forever mad at corn ethanol and we should at least replace all that with solar farms. That's probably the right place to start. But also, again, zoning...
show comments
declan_roberts
HN is probably over-indexed on people living in high-density cities, which might explain why tech like this and also things like vertical farming are popular here. However there's almost no dimensional constraint for farmland in the United States. We have vast amounts of it and there's really nothing to be gained from "stacking"
Often these "solutions" introduce more problems than they solve. One example being a solar farm designed to be grazed by sheep where the panels are so low to the ground that farmers can't bring in tractors and cut hay when the ruminants are gone for a season.
The best solution is still to put solar panels and farmland in different places where each can be optimized without concern for the other.
show comments
foolfoolz
if your initial reaction is we have tons of empty land why would we ever build solar panels over a farm?
this isn’t an either-or question. a farm owner may want to add some revenue with electricity generation. just like a hospital may want to cover their parking lot to offset costs.
at giant scale do these solar location choices optimize the absolutely best use of land for cheapest possible electricity generation? no. but at small scale it can make sense for these individual owners
little known fact: US currently grows a lot of corn for ethanol production. If we replaced that all with solar panels we'd have plenty of electricity. The solar vs farm debate is usually framed as a tradeoff with food production but that's not really true
One thing the article doesn't mention is that some plants prefer a little shade.
So while broccoli yields may have "held steady," it's possible they could make even more gains elsewhere where it might normally be too sunny. So leafy vegetables like spinach might be doing equivalently fine under the magenta shades in New Jersey, but might actually be even better in Texas.
show comments
mangecoeur
I find the physics of wavelength-dependent materials properties oddly satisfying. You can do clever things like this, extracting energy from different parts of the spectrum by combining materials and conversion processes. You can beam waste heat back to space through the atmosphere’s “infrared window”. You can explain global warming from first principles. Fascinating stuff!
show comments
crazygringo
Are there realistic ways of harvesting vegetables at scale that are underneath mounted solar panels, with all their supports?
Or is the idea that there aren't now, but they could be built?
I'm just imagining that you are going to need a lot of vertical clearance for tractors, and support posts will have to be widely spaced enough that the horizontal beams supporting the panels will have to be quite strong, and that at some point this is less solar panels in a field, and more like constructing a building with solar panels on its roof.
show comments
pfdietz
CdTe panels are limited by availability of tellurium. Maybe we'll mine that in space one day; much of the Earth's Te was lost as volatile H2Te. The abundance of Te in carbonaceous chondrites is about 1000x that in the Earth's crust.
show comments
addaon
I'd love this for a home greenhouse... I live in an area where during the summer insolation is high enough that some combination of large amounts shading and airflow (wasting humidity) is needed... wavelength-selective shading seems like an interesting idea to start with, and energy recovery from it is a nice add-on.
show comments
AngryData
The only real problem with this becoming common practice? The very first question and assumption of needing a solution.
>Vegetable farms and solar farms both need lots of sunlight and open space. But how do we divide our limited lands between these two priorities?
We are in no way limited by farmland space. Farmland utilization has been dropping since WWI thanks to the invention of artificial fertilizer, and even without artificial fertilizer at current population levels we would have never ran out of farmland although there would be a lot more of it. All across the midwest you will find tracks of land that use to be farmland, but is now either overgrown with trees, grass, or shrubs and completely unutilized for any human purposes. And our main limitation to growing even more food if we wanted a bunch extra for some reason would be fertilizer production/energy, not land space.
This is great science and knowledge, but I don't expect anything useful coming from it for farming on earth. There is no shortage of dirt that the sun shines on now or anytime soon, and no matter how efficient your panels, plants, or extra lights are, the sun is free and a greenhouse is way cheaper than anything else you could possibly build.
show comments
SoftTalker
There are countless square miles of vacant land in the USA that are unsuitable for farming and ideal for solar. This might be useful in areas where vacant land is actually scarce.
show comments
twobitshifter
Wild, I did a science fair experiment on plant growth vs light color as a young kid! i had each plant in a different shade of upside down tumbler cup and compared the growth. N=1 for each cup, but I remember being surprised that the plants really didn’t seem to care when you filtered out certain shades.
PowerElectronix
I really wouldn't want anything containing cadmium near a farm field.
show comments
hugmynutus
Material Science Gameplay Loop
1. Development Miracle Substance
2. Try to replicate the properties without Cadmium, Mercury, Arsenic, and Lead
3. Figure out how to scale production
4. Congratulations you're selling the material, but 6 months ago another team had a break through, so the loop resets.
theoreticalmal
Man I’d buy and install these in a heartbeat. My suburban house has a couple of small areas that would be perfect for a greenhouse that produces electricity
ortusdux
I like the idea of hybridizing the solar infrastructure to work with advanced AG systems. I watched a recent tour of a modern strawberry farm, and I was surprised that they were using wheeled robots instead of overhead tracks.
I especially like how this could reduce the need for irrigation in dryer climates.
polarsanel
Literal children of the magenta.
josh-wrale
Aren't there toxic substances used in the panels?
show comments
formvoltron
This is WAY more interesting than SpaceX launch number yada yada or whatever.
Datacenters in space are for Elon & his stock price, nothing more. Meanwhile we are not prioritizing things like this nearly enough. Solar on earth is what needs to be rolled out in a massive way, for our current energy needs and for datacenters.
show comments
omgwtfbyobbq
I think the question is, are these panels less expensive than taking normal panels, maybe with LEDs to help growth at night, and adding solar tracking to optimize solar generation, plant shading, and plant growth?
show comments
wjnc
Economics would suggest full spectrum panels on the outside + LED-lights on the right spectrum on the inside will always be more affordable than specialized panels. You still need lights with magenta panels to hit 18+hrs of light a day. Once the lights are already installed, specialized panels would be hard to justify a mark-up.
Specialty cut flower grower here. Backyard scale, but we're profitable and have received some grants so that means we have had a USDA relationship for a couple years. The rep I've talked to and am closest with is skeptical of agrivoltaics due to past dealings with solar companies (not sure what she means). There doesn't seem to be enough reliable public data to make it seem like the win-win-win we want it to be. In their mind, you're adding a non-ag industry to the land and that could have downstream consequences in a generation. Maybe you're scheming to get the land re-zoned for light industrial; I honestly have no idea what they're thinking, but they're averse toward it.
Most flowers in 7b don't want extreme sun. We use shade cloth frequently, so solar coverage would be fine and of course have the energy co-production. Cut flowers aren't harvested mechanically at our scale, so we wouldn't have to worry about tractor access.
Meanwhile, more and more food is produced under cover for a lot of good reasons. Polytunnels, glass houses. You might get some summer shade from solar but what about season extension at the beginning of spring/end of fall? Depending on your crop and location, that could mean 4-8 extra weeks a year. What if you do geothermal energy generation for the tunnel? Now you can grow through the winter and not need the same footprint as solar. That's more appealing to me.
Anyway, I'm forever mad at corn ethanol and we should at least replace all that with solar farms. That's probably the right place to start. But also, again, zoning...
HN is probably over-indexed on people living in high-density cities, which might explain why tech like this and also things like vertical farming are popular here. However there's almost no dimensional constraint for farmland in the United States. We have vast amounts of it and there's really nothing to be gained from "stacking"
Often these "solutions" introduce more problems than they solve. One example being a solar farm designed to be grazed by sheep where the panels are so low to the ground that farmers can't bring in tractors and cut hay when the ruminants are gone for a season.
The best solution is still to put solar panels and farmland in different places where each can be optimized without concern for the other.
if your initial reaction is we have tons of empty land why would we ever build solar panels over a farm?
this isn’t an either-or question. a farm owner may want to add some revenue with electricity generation. just like a hospital may want to cover their parking lot to offset costs.
at giant scale do these solar location choices optimize the absolutely best use of land for cheapest possible electricity generation? no. but at small scale it can make sense for these individual owners
https://electrek.co/2026/10/05/six-flags-has-installed-one-o...
little known fact: US currently grows a lot of corn for ethanol production. If we replaced that all with solar panels we'd have plenty of electricity. The solar vs farm debate is usually framed as a tradeoff with food production but that's not really true
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2025/04/new-study-compa...
One thing the article doesn't mention is that some plants prefer a little shade.
So while broccoli yields may have "held steady," it's possible they could make even more gains elsewhere where it might normally be too sunny. So leafy vegetables like spinach might be doing equivalently fine under the magenta shades in New Jersey, but might actually be even better in Texas.
I find the physics of wavelength-dependent materials properties oddly satisfying. You can do clever things like this, extracting energy from different parts of the spectrum by combining materials and conversion processes. You can beam waste heat back to space through the atmosphere’s “infrared window”. You can explain global warming from first principles. Fascinating stuff!
Are there realistic ways of harvesting vegetables at scale that are underneath mounted solar panels, with all their supports?
Or is the idea that there aren't now, but they could be built?
I'm just imagining that you are going to need a lot of vertical clearance for tractors, and support posts will have to be widely spaced enough that the horizontal beams supporting the panels will have to be quite strong, and that at some point this is less solar panels in a field, and more like constructing a building with solar panels on its roof.
CdTe panels are limited by availability of tellurium. Maybe we'll mine that in space one day; much of the Earth's Te was lost as volatile H2Te. The abundance of Te in carbonaceous chondrites is about 1000x that in the Earth's crust.
I'd love this for a home greenhouse... I live in an area where during the summer insolation is high enough that some combination of large amounts shading and airflow (wasting humidity) is needed... wavelength-selective shading seems like an interesting idea to start with, and energy recovery from it is a nice add-on.
The only real problem with this becoming common practice? The very first question and assumption of needing a solution.
>Vegetable farms and solar farms both need lots of sunlight and open space. But how do we divide our limited lands between these two priorities?
We are in no way limited by farmland space. Farmland utilization has been dropping since WWI thanks to the invention of artificial fertilizer, and even without artificial fertilizer at current population levels we would have never ran out of farmland although there would be a lot more of it. All across the midwest you will find tracks of land that use to be farmland, but is now either overgrown with trees, grass, or shrubs and completely unutilized for any human purposes. And our main limitation to growing even more food if we wanted a bunch extra for some reason would be fertilizer production/energy, not land space.
This is great science and knowledge, but I don't expect anything useful coming from it for farming on earth. There is no shortage of dirt that the sun shines on now or anytime soon, and no matter how efficient your panels, plants, or extra lights are, the sun is free and a greenhouse is way cheaper than anything else you could possibly build.
There are countless square miles of vacant land in the USA that are unsuitable for farming and ideal for solar. This might be useful in areas where vacant land is actually scarce.
Wild, I did a science fair experiment on plant growth vs light color as a young kid! i had each plant in a different shade of upside down tumbler cup and compared the growth. N=1 for each cup, but I remember being surprised that the plants really didn’t seem to care when you filtered out certain shades.
I really wouldn't want anything containing cadmium near a farm field.
Material Science Gameplay Loop
1. Development Miracle Substance
2. Try to replicate the properties without Cadmium, Mercury, Arsenic, and Lead
3. Figure out how to scale production
4. Congratulations you're selling the material, but 6 months ago another team had a break through, so the loop resets.
Man I’d buy and install these in a heartbeat. My suburban house has a couple of small areas that would be perfect for a greenhouse that produces electricity
I like the idea of hybridizing the solar infrastructure to work with advanced AG systems. I watched a recent tour of a modern strawberry farm, and I was surprised that they were using wheeled robots instead of overhead tracks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TumxO2glmPQ
I especially like how this could reduce the need for irrigation in dryer climates.
Literal children of the magenta.
Aren't there toxic substances used in the panels?
This is WAY more interesting than SpaceX launch number yada yada or whatever.
Datacenters in space are for Elon & his stock price, nothing more. Meanwhile we are not prioritizing things like this nearly enough. Solar on earth is what needs to be rolled out in a massive way, for our current energy needs and for datacenters.
I think the question is, are these panels less expensive than taking normal panels, maybe with LEDs to help growth at night, and adding solar tracking to optimize solar generation, plant shading, and plant growth?
Economics would suggest full spectrum panels on the outside + LED-lights on the right spectrum on the inside will always be more affordable than specialized panels. You still need lights with magenta panels to hit 18+hrs of light a day. Once the lights are already installed, specialized panels would be hard to justify a mark-up.