New Agrivoltaic Showcases Sheep And Honeybees

Last Updated on: 1st June 2025, 10:21 am

The US agriculture industry is facing a tsunami of misfortune between trade wars, climate impacts, and a fresh round of colony collapse disorder that decimated the honeybee population last year. In one bright spot, new agrivoltaic projects demonstrate that solar energy, crops, and livestock can coexist on the same land, creating new opportunities for farmers to earn revenue while preserving the land from development into shopping malls, housing developments, fulfillment centers and the like.

Farming-Friendly Solar Power Plants

The science behind the agrivoltaic movement began to emerge in force during the first Trump administration, as researchers assembled evidence that some plants can thrive in between solar panels, despite the shade they cast — or, in some cases, because the shade provides a beneficial cooling  environment (see more solar-plus-farming background here).

That’s a sharp contrast with earlier practices, in which solar arrays were typically mounted on beds of gravel or other l0w-maintenance ground cover to cut costs, damaging the soil below if not permanently destroying it. Under an agrivoltaic scenario, livestock grazing can keep excess vegetation in check while restoring nutrients to the soil.

Farmers are also beginning to introduce food crops into solar arrays, but pollinator habitats, marginal farmland restoration, and livestock grazing are more typical use cases here in the US.

A 10-Hive Apiary For A New Agrivoltaic Project

Agrivoltaic specialists have also emerged to provide solar developers with purpose-built designs, hardware, and ecological guidance aimed at optimizing solar generation and agricultureat the same site.

Urban Grid, an Independent Power Producer that specializes in agrivoltaic projects, demonstrates how solar developers can take advantage of the growing store of knowledge and resources supporting the solar-plus-farming movement. The Texas-based company already grazes lambs on its 65-megawatt Crystal Hill Solar project in Halifax County, Virginia, and it has just launched a 10-hive, 500,000-bee apiary at the edge of the site in partnership with the Virginia firm Siller Pollinator Company.

“Together, Urban Grid and Siller’s founding farmer Allison Wickham are launching a multi-year study of pollinator activity and plant diversity on solar land. The program includes vegetation monitoring, soil sampling and honey analysis to understand how pollinators interact with the solar environment—and what that means for the surrounding ecosystem,” Urban Grid explains.

The new apiary is no small potatoes. Urban Grid expects the hives to produce more than 400 pounds of honey per year. In addition to providing samples for research, the company plans to share the honey among community food banks, schools, and faith organizations.

Next Steps For Agrivoltaic Research In The USA

The Trump-Musk budget chopper took a hard swing at the research branch of the US Department of Agriculture earlier this year, including the division that monitors colony collapse disorder. CCD is a catch-all for various conditions, whether environmental or human-made, that prompt worker bees to abandon their hives.

In normal times, USDA labs would be humming with activity as researchers race to find the causes and help restore bee populations. No such luck this year, which makes private sector agrivoltaic research projects like Crystal Hill all the more valuable.

“We’re not just placing hives on a solar site—we’re farming this land,” Allison Wickham emphasized in a press statement. “We’ll be analyzing pollen to identify what species bees are foraging, measuring vegetation changes over time and comparing site conditions near and far from the hives.”

“This kind of research can help shape smarter, more sustainable solar land use across the country and provide greater opportunities to a wider range of farmers and land managers,” Wckham added.

Here Come The Food Crops

In tandem with the new apiary, Wickham has been tasked with establishing a rotating crop operation on three acres of the Crystal Hill array, located near the hives. Urban Grid expects the pilot project to inform the expansion of its agrivoltaic plans from grazing and beekeeping to raise food crops, too. The company also plans to assess how its bee colonies benefit other nearby properties.

“This pilot gives us the chance to research pollinator impacts on the local community,”explains Urban Grid VP of Asset Management Jeff Hudson. “By installing the hives on the edge of the project we can study the impacts across a significant portion of the land, which allows us to measure pollination benefits for local farmland.”

“In the end, improving vegetation while producing energy is the goal—this is a business, and these innovations help us operate smarter while creating shared value for the communities we’re in,” Hudson added.

Next Steps For The US Agrivoltaic Industry

The loss of USDA research staff is not the only problem besetting the relationship between farmers and the federal government. In February, USDA summarily clawed back reimbursable renewable energy grants that had already been approved under the agency’s longstanding REAP (Rural Energy for America Program) branch, leaving some farmers on the hook for equipment and installation costs already incurred.

USDA later indicated that farmers could get reimbursed but they would need to align their grant descriptions with the priorities of the Trump administration, effectively boxing out agrivoltaic systems along with other renewable energy projects.

Meanwhile, private sector stakeholders like Urban Grid are picking up part of the slack. Urban Grid currently lists a 1-gigawatt (DC) portfolio of contracted or under construction solar projects, with 12 more gigawatts of solar in the pipeline and 7 gigawatts in co-located or standalone energy storage projects.

If all goes according to plan, research on beekeeping, grazing, and food crops at the Crystal Hill site will inform similar projects in the future. “These insights will shape habitat design, vegetation planning and ecological performance across the company’s portfolio, as Urban Grid works to expand this model,” the company explains.

Of interest from a political perspective, the company’s current focus of operations covers 12 states including 10 that voted for the winning presidential candidate on Election Day 2024: Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Maryland and Delaware are the other two states.

Meanwhile, keep an eye on Virginia’s growing footprint in the US lamb industry. In addition to Urban Grid’s Crystal Hill operation, the firm AEP is hosting sheep on its 485-megawatt Spotsylvania Energy Center in Virginia. As a further benefit, the sheep reportedly enjoy the cool shade cast by the solar panels on hot summer days.

Photo (cropped): The Texas-based agrivoltaic specialist Urban Grid has added beehives and flocks of lambs to its 65-megawatt Crystal Hill solar array in Halifax County, Virginia (courtesy of Urban Grid).