SCAPES and Hortivoltaics at Energy Farm

The University of Illinois installed new solar infrastructure at the Energy Farm in 2022, enhancing the site’s capacity for renewable energy research. These installations support SCAPES, a multi-state project funded to explore the integration of renewable energy and agriculture across Illinois, Colorado, and Arizona.

While SCAPES originally focused on broader agrivoltaics comparisons across different climates and farming systems, the Energy Farm site has also allowed researchers to begin studying hortivoltaics — the co-location of specialty crops and solar energy production.

“I call it ‘hortivoltaics’ because it’s focused on horticultural crops like tomatoes and kale,” Bernacchi said. “It adds a whole dynamic level of diversity to the type of systems that we can study.”

These evolving research efforts align with broader educational initiatives like the publicly available game, My Agrivoltaic Farm.

The solar panel racks were generously donated by MT Solar, whose systems enable full-size farming equipment to operate between large solar arrays, supporting real-world agricultural management alongside solar energy production.

You can view real-time solar energy production data from the Energy Farm here.

🔗 Read the full article on the iSEE website.