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As summers grow hotter, we’ll need new solutions for agriculture and the people who keep this industry going. Now, a study finds that the practice of coupling solar panels with farmland, known as agrivoltaics, isn’t only cooling for crops, but for people, too—decreasing heat by several degrees for both.
Many agrivoltaics studies have investigated the pros and cons of these hybrid landscapes in specific, real-world field scenarios. This study took a different approach, using a computer model to simulate the unique microclimates that develop beneath solar panels.
“We wanted to build a model so people can test these physics and new design ideas before spending money on hardware,” say Erfan Hosseini, PhD candidate at Princeton University, and Elie Bou-Zeid, researcher in civil and environemtal engineering at the university, and both authors on the new study. The model simulated the movement of air, heat and moisture between panels, soil, and plants, and then looked at the effects on those crops, panels—and the people tending to them. 
In this case, using data from tomato farms and simulating the effect of a typical New Jersey summer’s day, the model compared open-field tomatoes with crops grown under solar panel shading, and found something extraordinary. Tomato leaves would be at least 1.84 °C cooler under a patchwork of solar panels, it found, but up to 7.56 °C cooler during the heat of the day, compared to unshaded plants. 
This cooling effect would also reduce water loss from the leaves by 22.4% per day, and by 42.6% daily from both crops and soil. In turn, the air-cooling effects of this evapotranspiration would chill the solar panels themselves by 5.6 °C, reducing heat-related efficiency losses by 15%.
 
 
Despite the shaded tomatoes receiving 47% less direct sunlight, their photosynthesis declined by 31%—a figure that was lower than the researchers expected. This suggested, as other studies also have, that the benefits of a cooler microclimate offset the productivity losses of less sun. 
Most uniquely, the model revealed that the overall cooling influence had a benefit for people. Farm laborers would experience this as a 4.46 °C decline in average temperatures. In the simulated scenario, installing solar panels on tomato farms brought down perceived temperatures from 39 °C to around 35 °C. 
That’s a significant reduction in a warming world. “Outdoor workers bear the brunt of this heat, and their drop in productivity has wider socio-economic repercussions,” say Hosseini and Bou-Zeid. “Our results show that shading dominates and results in improved thermal comfort, improving workers’ health, wellbeing, and productivity.”
Solar panels are emerging as a key climate solution for energy, crops, and people. But before we roll them out across farmland at large scales, we’ll need to weigh up their pros and cons. “Agrivoltaics design is not one-size-fits-all,” the two researchers say. “That’s exactly why a tool like this is needed. It lets you find out before you build your first prototype.”
“We’d welcome working with growers and developers who want to try it on real sites.”
Bou-Zeid et. al. “Food, Energy, and Health Implications of Agrivoltaic Farms.” Journal of Advances in Modelling Earth Systems. 2026.
Image: Werner Slocum / NLR
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