Analysis Tools Can Help Farmers Calculate Economics of Agrivoltaics

The University of Massachusetts Amherst developed a new set of analytical tools to help farmers calculate whether agrivoltaics make economic sense for them. The two spreadsheet-based tools consist of a crop-specific logbook to analyze farm-level activities and a whole-farm tool to calculate aggregate projections for trade-offs between crop production with or without agrivoltaics. The spreadsheets incorporate factors such as different solar technologies, crop spacing, labor costs, and extra fuel to navigate farm equipment around solar panels. “Agrivoltaics — and farming itself — come in so many shapes and forms that there’s no one-size-fits-all answer as to whether solar is the right choice,” explains Dwayne Breger, director of the Clean Energy Extension and extension professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst. “But what we hope to do is provide farmers with the science to decide if it’s right for them.”