---
title: what agrivoltaics pays for twice
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-agrivoltaics-pays-for-twice
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-agrivoltaics-pays-for-twice.md
subtitle: "one acre, two checks. both rest on the forage under the panels"
category: nature-finance
---

# what agrivoltaics pays for twice

*one acre, two checks. both rest on the forage under the panels*

**Agrivoltaics** is solar power and agriculture on the same land: panels overhead, and a crop, a flock, or a working pasture underneath and between the rows. A conventional array turns an acre into one check. An agrivoltaic acre can carry two: one for the power and one for what still grows under it. Both checks rest on the same thing, and it isn't the panels. It's the forage and the soil.

That is the whole post. The rest is who writes each check, what each one is on the books, and the third check that usually never gets written.

## agrivoltaics, defined

The National Laboratory of the Rockies (named NREL until December 2025) leads InSPIRE, the Department of Energy-funded research project on this. The lab defines agrivoltaics as solar deployed on a farm *while maintaining agricultural production* on the land under and between the panels. That production can be crops or livestock grazing. Panels on a barn roof beside a pasture don't count. The farming has to happen inside the array.

The lab's 2024 count found more than 580 agrivoltaic and ecovoltaic sites in the United States, covering more than 62,000 acres and more than 10,000 megawatts. Most of them are grazing and pollinator habitat, not vegetable rows under tall racking. That matters for the income story, because sheep and native cover pay differently than tomatoes.

**Ecovoltaics** is the close cousin: solar paired with pollinator habitat or native vegetation, managed for ecosystem services rather than a harvest. The two can overlap when a flock grazes a native seed mix.

## one acre, two checks

**The first check is the power.** It takes one of two forms. A landowner who leases ground to a developer collects **rent**: the developer pays for the right to occupy the acre, and its own revenue comes from selling the electricity to a utility or another buyer under an offtake contract. A landowner who owns the array sells the power directly, through an offtake contract, community solar subscriptions, or net metering. That is **product** income, with the equipment risk that comes with it. Same panels, different line on the statement.

**The second check is the crop or the flock.** A crop under elevated panels is product: the farmer sells it at market like any other harvest. Grazing is where people guess wrong about which way the money moves. In most solar grazing, the array operator pays the grazier to manage vegetation. The American Solar Grazing Association's contract template is a services agreement, with fees typically set per acre or per site for a season, and the association's checklist tells site managers to expect to pay a shepherd roughly what they pay for mowing. So the sheep under the panels are often a **service fee** flowing *to* the grazier, not rent flowing to the owner. The grazier may be the landowner, a tenant, or the neighbor with a flock.

That last point is the farm tenant's question. When an owner signs a conventional solar lease on rented cropland, the tenant usually loses those acres. An agrivoltaic plan is one of the few ways a tenant or grazier stays on the ground for the life of the lease. Whether the tenant's old cash rent survives is the next post in this series.

| line | who pays | who receives | what it is on the books | what it rests on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solar land lease | Developer, out of offtake revenue | Landowner | Rent | The acre, the sun, the interconnection |
| Power sale (owner-operated array) | Utility or subscribers | Array owner | Product | Same, plus equipment risk |
| Crop under the panels | Market buyer | Farmer | Product | Soil, water, a shade-tolerant crop |
| Solar grazing | Usually the array operator | Grazier | Service fee (occasionally grazing rent the other way) | The forage |
| Ecovoltaic habitat | Usually nobody yet | — | A vegetation plan and a reporting duty, not a line | Native cover, pollinators, infiltration |
| The neighbor's check | The parcel that depends on that habitat or slower runoff | The host | Income, once someone writes it | The same living cover |

An appraiser will want these separated anyway. A long lease with a creditworthy developer reads differently from a crop sold at spot, and both read differently from a mowing contract. Keep them on separate lines and no one has to untangle them later.

:::johnson
**one acre, two checks, one living thing.** The power check and the crop or flock check are separate lines. Both depend on the forage and soil under the panels. Keep that ground alive and the acre still leases as farmland when the array comes out.

[see what funds the soil under the array →](/healthy-soils.ensurance?from=guide)
:::

## the forage is the living thing

The panels are equipment. The lease is a contract. The forage, and the soil holding it, is the only part of the acre that is alive.

What the panels do to that ground has been measured. In a 2019 study at the University of Arizona's Biosphere 2 site north of Tucson, Greg Barron-Gafford and colleagues found that panel shade reduced drought stress on the plants beneath. Soil held its moisture longer between irrigations, chiltepin peppers and cherry tomatoes produced more fruit, and the transpiring plants kept the panels cooler in daytime heat. The same paper names the limits: mechanized harvest is harder under racking, and raising the array high enough to farm under costs more. One dryland site is not a forecast for an Iowa cornfield. The lab's own guidance comes down to fit: climate, configuration, crops and cultivation, compatibility, and collaboration decide whether the second check is real.

On the owner's books, then, the forage under the panels exists whether or not anyone buys a certificate. It can show up as rent, as a product, or as a check from the parcel that depends on it. Each of those raises [net operating income](/guide/what-net-operating-income-actually-counts?from=guide). *Ensurance* funds the living system. It is not the lease.

Keep three deposits apart:

- **A new check.** The power lease or power sale. Money that wasn't there before.
- **The same acre still earning.** The grazing fee or the crop, from ground that would otherwise be fenced off and mowed.
- **Income that stays collectible.** Solar leases run for decades and then end. Soil kept under living cover the whole time can be farmed and leased again. Ground that was graded and graveled becomes a pad, and [a solar pad is not the land it replaced](/guide/a-solar-pad-is-not-a-desert?from=guide).

Selling the acres to a developer, or taking a one-time easement payment for the array, is capital, not operating income. Don't book it as either check.

## when the second check is habitat, not hay

![photo by Andres Siimon (@johnmcclane) on unsplash](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1626251376234-8bc112f0bcd5?w=1200&fit=crop)

Some arrays aren't managed for a harvest at all. Minnesota wrote this into statute: under section 216B.1642, an owner of a ground-mounted solar site larger than 40 kilowatts can manage it for native perennial vegetation and foraging habitat for game birds, songbirds, and pollinators, and to reduce stormwater runoff and erosion. To claim the habitat benefit, the site has to meet the Board of Water and Soil Resources' Habitat Friendly Solar standard (a goal of at least 70 percent native cover), publish its vegetation plan, and report back every three years.

On that acre the second line is not hay. Nobody sells the bloom. What the acre produces is pollinator forage, soil that stays put, and rain that soaks in instead of running off. Those benefits land next door: on the orchard or seed crop whose fruit set depends on pollinators, and on the ditch or road downstream that takes less water after a storm.

That is the check almost no one writes. The array owner carries the vegetation plan and the reporting. The neighbors collect the benefit. Where a neighbor's costs fall because this acre holds water or feeds pollinators, the line this series keeps coming back to applies: *their lower bill is your income*. The structure exists. The payment usually doesn't yet. The expense side of this series covers [how a property owner pays for nature-based solutions on another parcel](/guide/how-a-property-owner-pays-for-nature-based-solutions-on-another-parcel?from=guide).

## where a certificate fits

Once the income lines are clear, here is the one new piece. A **certificate** on *ensurance* funds the present condition of a named place, in this case the soil and the forage under an array. It doesn't replace the lease or the grazing contract. It isn't an offset, and it doesn't satisfy a county condition or the Minnesota habitat standard. It is a record of who paid to keep that ground alive, held onchain so anyone can check it. Read it as a ledger of payments to the place and the chain is just where the ledger lives.

- Agrivoltaic ground, where the job is keeping soil living through a multi-decade lease: [`healthy-soils.ensurance`](/healthy-soils.ensurance?from=guide).
- Ecovoltaic ground, where the job is native cover and pollinator forage: [`habitat.ensurance`](/habitat.ensurance?from=guide).

## before you sign

Four questions a landowner can ask a developer, a grazier, or a tenant this week:

1. **Which check is rent and which is product?** Who signs each one, and does the developer's lease allow a second agricultural contract inside the fence?
2. **Who manages the vegetation, and who pays whom?** Grazing, mowing, or native cover. Put the direction of the money in writing.
3. **What happens to the soil?** Seed mix, grading, gravel, and what decommissioning has to hand back.
4. **If the second line is habitat, who depends on it?** Name the neighbor. That's where the missing check comes from.

None of this is investment, tax, or legal advice. It's how to sort the lines before you call the people who do give that advice.

Next in the series: [what cash rent is already pricing](/guide/what-cash-rent-is-already-pricing?from=guide). It covers the owner who never drives the tractor and still collects from the soil.

## the series

**the bill (expense side)**

1. [what net operating income actually counts](/guide/what-net-operating-income-actually-counts?from=guide)
2. [what commercial property operating expenses already include](/guide/what-commercial-property-operating-expenses-already-include?from=guide)
3. [what a stormwater utility fee is paying for](/guide/what-a-stormwater-utility-fee-is-paying-for?from=guide)
4. [what the community rating system changes on a flood policy](/guide/what-the-community-rating-system-changes-on-a-flood-policy?from=guide)
5. [how a property owner pays for nature-based solutions on another parcel](/guide/how-a-property-owner-pays-for-nature-based-solutions-on-another-parcel?from=guide)

**the deposit (income side)**

1. [what a hunting lease actually is](/guide/what-a-hunting-lease-actually-is?from=guide)
2. [what agrivoltaics pays for twice](/guide/what-agrivoltaics-pays-for-twice?from=guide)
3. [what cash rent is already pricing](/guide/what-cash-rent-is-already-pricing?from=guide)
4. [what stormwater credit trading pays the host](/guide/what-stormwater-credit-trading-pays-the-host?from=guide)
5. [how landowners get paid for ecosystem services](/guide/how-landowners-get-paid-for-ecosystem-services?from=guide)

## sources

[Agrivoltaics Basics, National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly NREL), FY25](https://docs.nlr.gov/docs/fy25osti/91638.pdf): definition of agrivoltaics and ecovoltaics; October 2024 count of more than 580 US sites, 62,000 acres, and 10,000 MW

[InSPIRE project, OpenEI](https://en.openei.org/wiki/InSPIRE): federal agrivoltaics research program, national site map, and the "5 Cs" of agrivoltaic success

[Barron-Gafford et al., "Agrivoltaics provide mutual benefits across the food–energy–water nexus in drylands," Nature Sustainability, 2019](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0364-5): Biosphere 2 field results on plant drought stress, soil moisture, fruit production, and panel temperature, plus the stated barriers

[American Solar Grazing Association, contract templates](https://solargrazing.org/contracts/): the services-agreement structure between graziers and solar operators

[American Solar Grazing Association, solar grazing checklist](https://solargrazing.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Solar-Grazing-Checklist-for-Sheperds-and-Site-Managers-Updated.pdf): fee structures and the "pay a shepherd what you pay for mowing" guidance

[Minnesota Statutes section 216B.1642, solar site management](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/216B.1642): habitat and runoff management practices and the conditions for claiming habitat benefits

[Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources, Habitat Friendly Solar Program](https://bwsr.state.mn.us/minnesota-habitat-friendly-solar-program): the state standard and assessment form, including the 70 percent native cover goal