Location: Range Management Research
2024 Annual Report
Objectives
Objective 1: Design and develop optimized agrivoltaic installations and best management practices for multi-functional cropping and rangeland production and agricultural processing systems.
Objective 2: Develop and deploy decision support tools for agrivoltaics in specific agricultural systems, including economic and life cycle assessment.
Approach
The Range Management Unit and Cotton Ginning Research Unit will collaborate to develop systems-level concepts and tools to guide agrivoltaics efforts in croplands, rangelands, and agricultural processing systems of the Southwest. The units will integrate research datasets and analyze and report agrivoltaic costs and benefits using standardized indicator frameworks and econometric analysis. The units will conduct research on optimal siting and design of photovoltaic installations to maximize agroecological co-benefits. The units will develop tools and best management practices for agrivoltaic system integration, maintenance, energy utilization, and return on investment. The units will create agreements with University partners to support experiments in photovoltaic installations with key crop and soil types common to Southwestern ecosystems at agricultural research centers and postharvest processors. The units will collaborate with government agencies and agricultural stakeholders controlling land on which renewable energy development projects are planned. Initial project phase will define knowledge gaps about likely co-benefits and challenges and determine priorities for next phases of research in the Southwest
Progress Report
This project is unique within ARS as it is collaborative across two research units in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Two Scientist Year (SY) positions were budgeted though both remain unfilled. One contractor to assist with standing up the project was employed through the New Solutions program. One Range Science Technician was hired and a postdoc at New Mexico State University is supported via a cooperative agreement.
This project was unprecedented as it was the project’s first year. The primary accomplishments were developing goals, forming research collaborations and designing agrivoltaics experiments, and building relationships with stakeholders during this first year to begin addressing both project objectives.
Goal development was informed by a thorough review of the literature reporting antecedent research performed primarily in Europe and Asia, by meeting with domestic practitioners during the Agrivoltaic Conference hosted by Rutgers University and attending the Agrivoltaics World Conference in Denver, Colorado, and through tours of agrivoltaic sites in California and Colorado. Project goals include building, and performing experiments under, solar photovoltaic panel arrays of multiple ground coverage ratios that are replicated and randomized over arable farmland and over rangeland. This is done to quantify land and water use efficiency at various levels of shading for crops and livestock produced in the arid Southwestern United States. Longer-term goals include developing and testing array systems that are compatible with mechanized production and rangeland systems, including post-harvest processing facilities, and are less expensive than current technology. Stakeholders have expressed considerable interest in collaborating with ARS on research investigating agrivoltaics systems for cattle grazing, agronomic crops, and post-harvest processors.
Significant progress was made by forming a collaboration and formal cooperative agreement with New Mexico State University (NMSU). The agreement leverages agrivoltaics infrastructure capabilities of NMSU and ARS scientific personnel to investigate strategies and technologies for deployment, operation, and decommissioning of alternative agrivoltaics systems in New Mexico and the arid Southwest and will involve cropland and rangeland experimental agrivoltaics sites on NMSU-owned land and data collection on agricultural indicators related to crop or rangeland production and other ecosystem impacts. The collaborative effort resulted in several design alternatives with corresponding shade and energy production model simulations to aid the decision process. A sampling strategy was also developed. Contracting processes were also initiated.
Another collaborative effort was initiated with cotton industry leaders and Texas A&M University (TAMU) to investigate feasibility and potential of agrivoltaics systems to enhance the sustainability of the cotton production system. TAMU and ARS researchers will work together with the U.S. cotton industry to investigate strategies and technologies for deployment and operation of agrivoltaics systems at agricultural post-harvest processing facilities, like cotton gins, to understand important variables that impact adoption of agrivoltaics systems and to develop decision tools for evaluating sites for future agrivoltaics systems.
Accomplishments
1. Restorivoltaics as a strategy to avoid agriculture-renewable energy conflicts in rangelands. Renewable energy development in agricultural systems is controversial, especially when energy development is located in productive farmland and rangeland. Agrivoltaic systems seek to sustain agricultural production alongside solar energy production, but such systems may not be appropriate for degraded rangelands. ARS researchers in Las Cruces, New Mexico, identified the “restorivoltaics” concept that seeks to restore rangeland productivity alongside solar development on highly degraded soils. Restorivoltaic designs are in development and could increase the benefits that communities in arid rangelands receive from utility-scale solar energy development that positively impacts agriculture.