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Potatoes under solar panels can do surprisingly well, especially with a responsive system.
For years, one of the few worthy criticisms of solar power was that it can take up a lot of land. The solution was apparently simple: just put the solar panels higher and plant stuff under them.
But does it actually work?
Plants are living machines with hard limits. An agricultural field involves plowing, tractors, and fertilizers. Some plants don’t usually like the shade. This is what fueled the new four-year study conducted in Italy. Researchers grew potatoes from 2021 through 2024 under a commercial dual-axis tracking solar installation. The setup was tested in open-field full sun, a standard tracking setup with moderate shade, a heavier-shade setup, and, for one year, a clever “anti-tracking” maneuver that briefly rotated panels away during the crop’s most sensitive developmental window.
The main results are clear: potatoes can be grown under solar panels, but only if you manage the shade carefully.
Potatoes are one of the world’s great practical foods: cheap to grow, versatile to cook, and genuinely nutritious. They’re packed with healthy carbohydrates, potassium, vitamin C, fiber when eaten with the skin, and a surprising amount of useful protein. They’re also quite robust. It’s no accident that potatoes played such a central role in The Martian, and NASA is actually studying how to grow potatoes in space and on other planets.
But potatoes really don’t like the shade. They’re built to turn strong sunlight into the sugars that fill out tubers underground, so when light levels drop too much, the plant has less energy to bulk up the potatoes. However, the Italian team discovered a sweet spot for shading.
In 2021, marketable tuber yield reached 51.5 tonnes per hectare in full light. Then, under the standard agrivoltaic setup, it fell to 38.9. It’s a significant, but not a major drop. In a solar panel setup that produced heavier shade, it dropped to 28 tonnes. A similar trend was observed in 2022 and 2023.
Then came 2024, the year of the anti-tracking test. There, full light and the standard setup were statistically similar, and the anti-tracking treatment actually produced the highest yield at 32.7 tonnes per hectare, even above the full-light (“normal”) yield of 30.3. During the potato growing season, standard tracking reduced electricity production by around 15%.
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We are living through a climate transition that is putting immense pressure on our land. Unsurprisingly, agriculture is one of our biggest environmental challenges, with some studies estimating that it generates a third of our emissions. This could be a rare win-win scenario.
The system in Mantova was not tiny. It was a commercial agrivoltaic installation with dual-axis tracking panels, and the team even estimated the energy trade-off of the anti-tracking tweak. The agrivoltaics setup (mixing agriculture with photovoltaics) also withstood a scorching year, showing resilience. In fact, in this sense, the shade might actually be helpful sometimes.
We are living through a climate transition that is putting immense pressure on our land. In the Mediterranean, like in many parts of the world, heatwaves are becoming the new normal. While this study used irrigation to keep water stress at bay, the shade from the panels naturally lowers the temperature of the plants. In a future where water becomes even scarcer, the photovoltaics themselves could be slightly tweaked to prevent crops from getting fried.
Lastly, the study was conducted at an organic farming site. This is important because it shows that agrivoltaics can play nicely with sustainable, chemical-free agriculture.
There are limits here, and the authors are candid about them. But the main takeaway here is sharper than the usual “more research is needed”. Potatoes can live under solar panels. Sometimes they can even do surprisingly well, especially if the solar panels can be moved. But the margin is narrow. There’s real promise in agrivoltaics, but as this study suggests it works best when solar panels are responsive infrastructure, tuned to the biology below.
The good news is we already have the technology to incorporate that.
The study was published in the journal Smart Agricultural Technology.
Dr. Andrei Mihai is a geophysicist and founder of ZME Science. He has a Ph.D. in geophysics and archaeology and has completed courses from prestigious universities (with programs ranging from climate and astronomy to chemistry and geology). He is passionate about making research more accessible to everyone and communicating news and features to a broad audience.
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© 2007-2025 ZME Science – Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.
