Agrivoltaics: Progress and Potential with Jordan Macknick, NREL | EP230

In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague sits down with Jordan Macknick, a senior researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), to explore the fascinating world of agrivoltaics. With over a decade of experience in the field, Macknick offers a comprehensive look at the intersection of solar energy and agriculture, shedding light on the current state and future potential of this innovative approach to land use.

The conversation begins with Macknick's journey into agrivoltaics, going back to his early work in the wind industry and NREL's first agrivoltaics experiment in 2010. He then delves into NREL's mission to provide foundational data and services that enable better decision-making in the rapidly evolving field of agrivoltaics. Macknick discusses the challenges and opportunities in developing tools that can predict optimal agrivoltaics configurations for specific locations, emphasizing the need for more empirical data to refine these models.

Macknick highlights NREL's agrivoltaics map, a valuable resource tracking over 500 projects totaling more than 10 gigawatts of solar capacity across the country. He explains how these projects vary by region, adapting to local conditions and agricultural needs.

The episode also explores different applications of agrivoltaics, from the prevalent sheep grazing to the emerging potential of cattle grazing and growing crops. Macknick shares insights on ongoing research projects and the considerations for integrating larger livestock into solar installations.

Towards the end, Macknick introduces NREL's inspired data portal, a comprehensive database of nearly 700 research papers on agrivoltaics. This resource allows stakeholders to access and filter the latest scientific findings in the field, supporting informed decision-making and further research.

This episode offers valuable insights for solar developers, farmers, policymakers, and anyone interested in the future of sustainable energy and agriculture.

Social Media Handles
Jordan Macknick
InSPIRe Database
NREL Solar Market Research & Analysis: Agrivoltaics

Transcript

Jordan Macknick: 0:38

I think another, another thing that you know, sort of part of our responsibility with with NREL is, is to really make sure we're staying on top of the best available science and best available research. And so we we have what is called our inspired data portal, where we are collecting and synthesizing every single piece of research, whether it's from an academic or government source, on agrivoltaics, and so for this, we've got close to 700 papers that have been that have been published on agrivoltaics research. And

intro: 1:10

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Tim Montague: 1:39

We're here at the solar farm Summit, and my guest today is Jordan Macknick. He is a senior researcher at NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and he's an expert in all things agrivoltaics. Welcome to the show, Jordan.

Jordan Macknick: 1:53

Thank you very happy to be here. Great

Tim Montague: 1:55

to meet you. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got interested in the subject of agrivoltaics. Well,

Jordan Macknick: 2:01

my interest in agrivoltaics goes all the way back to about 20 years ago, when I was working in the wind industry for an organization that was helping farmers own, learn how to own and operate wind turbines on their own farm for the benefit of those farms. I always thought it'd be great if we could figure out how to make that happen for solar as well. Yeah, but it wasn't until about 2010 when I was at the at NREL, when I had first started at NREL, we planted our first agrivoltaic site on campus, where we planted pollinator habitat and other pasture grasses underneath panels in an experiment. Or what year was that that was all the way back in 2010

Tim Montague: 2:43

Okay, wow. So 14 years ago, you know, when we were talking a little bit in the pre show, you are, you know, trying to keep your fingers in everything that's going on in agrovoltaics now in the United States. And you know, my previous guest with the American Farmland Trust indicated that about 10% of solar projects now have something to do with agrivoltaics. That's a good start. I would imagine that we're headed towards 50% sometime in the next couple of decades. And I think that is a very good thing. I think it's, it's it's good for rural communities. It's good for farmland. It's good for solar developers, who are increasingly finding that local communities are pushing back on their projects. But what is your mission and what is it? How do you see the landscape of agrivoltaics today.

Jordan Macknick: 3:40

So that's not an easy question to answer. Well, we'll be, partly because the field is so dynamic right now. Yeah, so we are seeing so we're really in the in the early stages of the agrivoltaics field. There's still so much entrepreneurship, ingenuity, creativity happening with people figuring out, how can we make agrivoltaics work for this farm? How can we make agrivoltaics work for that farm? And so we're seeing a sort of an explosion of brand new ideas and things being tested out in a lot of different places, which I think is, frankly, a really exciting time. One of our missions at NREL, as it relates to agrivoltaics, is to try to provide foundational data and services that will allow people to have new ideas, new technologies, to make those technologies better, but also for landowners, for solar developers, state agencies, permitting agencies, to better understand, okay, is this technology real? Is this? Does this have a high likelihood of succeeding? Yes or no, there's a strong need for just some some basic data on costs, on performance, on impacts, on soil, water, microclimate, you know, you name it, that's sort of our mission is to provide a lot of that foundational information to better enable people to make more informed decisions.

Tim Montague: 5:09

You know, I was talking last night with a farmer who's awesome solar consultant in Canada, in Ontario, and he was kind of questioning me about the state of the state, and you know what my answer was, it's kind of all over the map. And one of the challenges for developers and farmers, I think, is that we don't have good enough tools today to quickly analyze a particular. Geography, a particular soil type, a particular ecosystems type, and prescribed to that farmer, to that landowner. Have you considered this type of agrivoltaic solution? Right? So we kind of need a a platform that allows a developer to say, Okay, I've, you know, I want to develop 100 megawatt site in central Illinois, which today is corn and beans, and tomorrow could be solar, plus x, y and z. Is that something that NREL is thinking about?

Jordan Macknick: 6:12

You have just described the holy grail of agrovoltaic tools, what we're sort of all working towards and what we all really see as something that's badly needed. I liken it to, you know, sort of a Dart on the map approach where, yeah, I, I, I'm gonna give you a dart. You're gonna throw it on this map. It could be Illinois, it could be Massachusetts, it could be Oregon, Texas, Alabama, wherever it might be, wherever that Dart lands, we need to figure out we would love the ability to say, all right, on this particular piece of land, if you build this type of solar project with this configuration, it will be ideally suited for that crop. That is sort of the, again, the holy grail that we're all shooting for now, what we are learning is that that's much easier said than done. So a lot of the work that's going on the field work that's going on right now is collecting a lot of that data. So we better know, okay, if I am in Mississippi and I do have this type of solar configuration, what impact does that have on them, on the soil, what does it have on the microclimate? Because then that better helps us understand, what could we what could we grow there? And the challenging thing is that the the outcomes are not quite the same as in traditional agroforestry. They're not quite the same as in other shade farming. So we're seeing new new results in terms of impacts of this shading on crop yields. So we're having to redo, you know, a lot of these, or do a lot of experiments in the context of agrivoltaics to figure out, okay, how do these conditions affect plant growth? Once we have a large enough number of these individual locations of actual data, actual empirical data, that gives us the ability to then put that into that tool, put those results into that into that model, into those tools, so then we can better do that prediction. But I will say we are not there yet. We need more field data to better understand the impact of solar on on crops, and we need to further refine the models if we want to have that really high confidence in saying, you know, throwing that Dart anywhere on the map, and then really saying exactly what configuration and what crops we should grow there. Yeah,

Tim Montague: 8:36

it's quite complicated, because it just take where I live, in central Roy. You know, we have some of the best farm ground in the world. And you know what has emerged is industrial cash cropping of corn and beans, and that's because the US government subsidizes those crops so heavily, upwards of 30% of a farmer's income in this area is subsidies. And people ask, Well, why aren't we growing, you know, broccoli and potatoes and spinach and a greater variety of foodstuffs that we humans eat instead of corn ethanol, for example, which is a huge amount of our real estate. And if the answer is complicated, right? But, and so it's doubly complicated for NREL, I think, to develop such a platform. And, you know, there are some consulting companies like Alexis buscas with her spades project, you know, getting at this, let's, let's, let's make it easier for developers to develop agri solar. And you know, so anyway, I really appreciate what NREL has done historically and the other national laboratories. You know that it's a it's a team effort. You know, you have the solar advisory model Sam, as it's known, was, was a very good foundation and still and still use. We in the industry tend to use more commercial tools like helioscope and so. So anyway, there's the tools and technology side of the business. I don't know if there's more to say about that,

Jordan Macknick: 10:15

so I think you bring up a good point, because there really is an ecosystem of of tools that are available of varying levels of complexity and for use for varying purposes. And so certain models, like the SAM model, the system advisor model, can be a great first cut assessment of of whether a solar project, you know, could be could be suitable. Model, and then obviously you might move on to something more sophisticated, a more proprietary model. But there, I think there's value in having various levels of accuracy, various levels of precision, sort of at different levels of where an individual user might be. We see it sort of as democratizing access to the ability to make calculations and do some initial assessments before someone might be ready to take that that next step. And so within the within the SAM model, we are implementing further capabilities to allow for more, I think, a more nuanced evaluation of agrivoltaics going forward. So a lot of those elements that I mentioned sort of, that are part of this holy grail tool, at least some of those fundamental aspects, you know, for for example, for calculating the exact shading and light availability. That's something that within our NREL analysis and NREL tool sets we've already done for the entire United States, and that's that is embedded into SAM already. And so we're sort of slowly giving, you know, bits and pieces of this, this grand model that's going to be needed to make these, to make these real, you know, great predictions. We're sort of making, you know, slow but sure steps to provide some of those, that foundational data.

Tim Montague: 11:57

So earlier, you said that there's a need for a lot of experimentation. And you know, the University of Arizona has documented that crops do become more productive when they experience some shading during the day. And that was not necessarily expected. But what is nrel's role when you look at the you know, the industry, the agrivoltaics industry, and you notice, for example, how heavy it is on sheep grazing today, 90 plus percent of agrivoltaics are sheep grazing related projects, right? There's an opportunity there to diversify. Can we go into cattle? Can we go into other cash crops, cotton? Can we go into other foodstuffs? Where, what is nrel's role in in that diversification?

Jordan Macknick: 12:49

Yeah, one, one interesting caveat, which is even though sheep grazing, agrivoltaic projects dominate the the acreage, the capacity of agrivoltaic projects. There's actually been relatively little research on on sheep grazing sites, especially as it compares to crop production sites. So we do think there's a lot of value in and still pursuing research to better, you know, within the the sheep grazing area, yeah, to better understand impacts on animal welfare, impacts on soil, impacts on hydrology, there's still more we need to learn about things that are even even though they're so widespread and we have so many projects, there's still more we can learn about sheep grazing and solar to better optimize those systems, better optimize your stocking rates, etc. But I'm digressing. I will answer your now to actually answer your question regarding what sort of what nrel's role. What we see is nrel's role in this space. In a lot of ways, we see the value of NREL as sometimes taking that first step that maybe a developer doesn't want to do, it might be too risky. We're unsure if, if this will actually be successful. I think one of the purposes of a national lab, you know, in a research lab, is to take, you know, that first step, when it is uncertain, and explore areas that haven't yet been been addressed and undertaken. And so this goes all the way back to the origins of our of nrels Inspire project where, where we started, you know, really looking at agrivoltaics in earnest back in 2016 and back then, it was very much a a niche, very, you know, there's a lot of skepticism over whether this was possible at all. So before the Arizona paper came out, you know, there was still a lot of uncertainty. We sort of saw it as our role to help demonstrate that a, yes, things can grow underneath solar panels and b a greater understanding as to why things might grow or not grow as well underneath solar panels, and so we, really, I think, see it as our role is to help, in some cases, take that first step to reduce the risk for others, and then broadly share the information and insights that we gather from this so that other people can, you know, learn from what was successful or not successful, and in in cases where we have seen things not being successful, we don't want people to replicate things that are not successful. Because with agrivoltaics, it's a it's a large investment. A large sunk investment if you're not successful with what you do. So we really try to, I think, minimize the risk that other researchers and other developers might take in developing an agrivoltaics project.

Tim Montague: 15:50

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Jordan Macknick: 17:32

Yes, we can do it. Yes, it is happening. And yes, we can also do more experimentation and figure that out. I think one of the the big challenges we are going to face with with cattle grazing Overall, though, is, is the height concern, and as as you think about it, with traditional utility scale solar designs, that additional height leads to more costs, you know, higher costs. So you have you have a you have more steel, it's going to drastically increase your, your installed capital costs, but we can still do it. It's still possible. Cattle, you know, like in so there's been research and demonstrations in in Minnesota, there's been, there's an ongoing project in Georgia. There's been demonstrations in in Colorado, another project being built in Oregon, so also in Massachusetts. So there's, you know, there's a handful of different places where people are already experimenting with it, already trying to best understand, how could this work. I think the the key for the industry is figuring out what is that right balance between what are acceptable cost increases that could allow for for cattle grazing, compared with the, you know, just the other other benefits that you might get in terms of health and animal welfare, benefits for for the cattle, other benefits to the soil, etc. So it's, it's really going to be a question coming down to not only economics, but then how, how you're weighing traditional solar economics with agricultural economics, and finding, finding that right balance? Because I think, as we've heard, you know, many, many times before, the United States, you know, definitely consumes much more more beef than we do, than we do lamb.

Tim Montague: 19:22

Yeah, it, I mean, 40% of the real estate of the of the open lands in the United States are used in some way, shape or form, for feeding livestock, I mean, and so it's a huge amount of real estate, and we only need some fraction of that to, you know, to solarize some fraction of that. But it does seem like, just like they discovered at the University of Arizona that some crops like a little bit of shade, the animals seem to gravitate to the shade as well, right? And a less stressed out animal is going to be a more productive animal. And so Absolutely,

Jordan Macknick: 19:57

and that's what the results of the research in Minnesota have shown, you know, sort of lower heart rates, lower stress on the animals when they're in that in the shade under the solar panels. The work that's going on in Georgia is showing showing similar preferences and benefits to cattle underneath the the panels. I think there, there's more, you know, research needed to actually quantify, you know, a little more clearly what those potential benefits are, but I think, I think we're seeing from those initial results that the cattle do prefer it.

Tim Montague: 20:33

So what else related to your work and nrel's work, would you like Alicia? Members to know about, and what is it that you're here to take home? Yeah,

Jordan Macknick: 20:44

so through, through NREL work, and through our inspire project, which was the Department of Energy's first investment, all in an agrivoltaics going all the way back to 2016 is really a it's meant to be a service that we, you know, providing fundamental data to the broader public, fundamental data to solar developers, to farmers, ranchers, policy makers and so on our on our website, we have a lot of, I think, really interesting resources. So one of those is our agrivoltaics map. So this is where we are tracking every single agrivoltaics project that's been built in the United States, and we have details on how big it is. Does it have? Is it elevated? Does it have? How wide are the rows? What sorts of technologies are we using and with within that? So we currently have tracked over 500 agrovoltaic projects in the United States right now, totaling over 10 gigawatts of solar capacity. We've got projects in Alaska, in Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, all across the continental United States. So we're really seeing, you know, agavoltaics sort of have its own flavor in each of these areas. So for the project in Alaska, they need to have the panels much, you know, what, more widely spread apart because of the low angle of the sun. And so there's a lot more different things you can do if you have 4050, foot spacing in between panels, compared if you only have, you know, 15 feet in between the panels. And so we're seeing sort of a local flavor to how agrivoltaic projects are being built, where they're being built, what people are growing on. So that this agrivoltaics map, I think, is a really useful resource for for people to learn about what agrivoltaic projects already exist close to me. So that's that's one thing I think is a really great resource that I like make sure people know about a second reason is

Tim Montague: 22:42

that easy to find? If I just Google agrivoltaics map and NREL, will I find the

Jordan Macknick: 22:46

Yeah, it should be the very first link that pops up, yeah.

Tim Montague: 22:50

And it's a dynamic map, so you can click on a project and get more information, yeah, yeah.

Jordan Macknick: 22:55

So you for every project you click on it, it can bring up some pictures about that project, all the details about how big the project is, what types of solar panels they're using, if they have any novel configurations, like panel height, panel spacing, things like that. Further links other news stories about that project. So it's, yeah, it's very dynamic. You can also filter. So if you only want to see crop production sites. There's about close to three dozen crop production sites in the US right now. You can filter for that, and then just see a map showing all the different crop production sites. You can also do it by size. If you only want to see projects over 100 megawatts, or less than one megawatt, you can filter it that way as well. Okay,

Tim Montague: 23:39

what else should our listeners know about your work?

Jordan Macknick: 23:41

I think another, another thing that you know, sort of part of our responsibility with with NREL is, is to really make sure we're staying on top of the best available science and best available research. And so we we have what is called our inspired data portal, where we are collecting and synthesizing every single piece of research, whether it's from an academic or government source on agrivoltaics. And so for this, we've got close to 700 papers that have been that have been published on agrivoltaics research. And so for there, we were able to synthesize and categorize each of these studies based on 75 different elements, based on what sort of research do they look at. And so this database is also filterable, sortable, easy to access. So if you really want to know, I'm interested in you know, what's the best available science on crop production, on tomatoes, for example, you can go to this resource and find the, you know, 65 papers that have been published on on tomato research and agrivoltaics, for example. Or if you're interested in the impacts of, you know, economics of sheep grazing, then you can filter by that and narrow it down to the studies that have been done on on that topic. And what is

Tim Montague: 24:59

the relationship between that and like the agrisolar Clearinghouse.

Jordan Macknick: 25:04

So the agri solar Clearinghouse is a great partner of ours, so we provide a lot of complimentary services. The agrisolar Clearinghouse is really targeted towards farmers, landowners who want to build a project on their farm, and they're saying, you know, I need practical information about the steps that are needed if I want to build a project on my farm. They we interact with them, because the work that we do is much more focused on broadly understanding, you know, the research. Using that to inform what those next steps should be. And so the work that we do is, I think, much more broad in scope and can be used for different purposes. So including, if, like, if you are a farmer wanting to build an agrivoltaic projects, you know, and and grow, grow tomatoes, you can go to the agrocelect Clearinghouse, sort of learn about those steps and the processes along the way to do that when it actually comes time to figuring out, okay, how should I be growing these tomatoes? What's what's going to do for my water yield? How should I design this? That's where a lot of the data portal information might come in, in in handy that we have, which provides a lot more, I think, sort of specific detail on on outcomes and and the sort of the the nitty gritty details associated with when agrivoltaics project,

Tim Montague: 26:29

very well. Check out all of our content at cleanpower.com Please give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. Reach out to me on LinkedIn and and Jordan magnick with NREL. Thank you so much for coming on the show. How can our listeners find you?

Jordan Macknick: 26:44

Ah, you can, you can search NREL Agrivoltaics inspire, and I'll take you right to us. Awesome.

Tim Montague: 26:51

I'm Tim Montague, let's grow agrivoltaics.