Energies Media
A research farm in central Jutland, a little over 56 degrees north, flat fields under a pale sky.
Across one of them run rows of solar panels standing straight up, one face turned east and the other west.
Between the rows grow winter wheat and a mix of grass and clover, planted and harvested like any other field.
A short walk away stand a second set of panels, tilted toward the south in the ordinary way.
The upright rows left the crop alone.
The tilted rows did not.
A panel tilted south is built to intercept as much sun as possible, and the light it catches is light the ground below never gets.
At a northern latitude the sun sits low for much of the year. A tilted row therefore throws a long shadow to its north, and that shadow lands on the same strip of ground hour after hour.
A vertical row behaves differently. Facing east and west, it presents only its thin edge to the midday sun, so the strongest light of the day passes straight down into the crop.
Its shadow moves instead. In the morning it falls to the west, in the afternoon to the east, and around noon it almost disappears, so no single strip stays dark for long.
Plants care about total light over the season, not about any one hour. Moving shade spreads the loss thinly, while fixed shade concentrates it.
Tilted panels park a shadow. Upright panels sweep one.
Over the 2023 growing season the researchers compared crops between the vertical rows, crops beside the tilted rows and an open reference field nearby.
Between the upright panels there was no significant difference in yield from the open field, either for winter wheat or for the grass clover mix. Wheat came in at roughly 63 bushels an acre.
Beside the south tilted panels the picture changed for the grass clover. Its August cut was significantly lower, which is the harvest that falls when the sun is already sinking and the shadows have lengthened.
The significant loss was reported for that grass clover cut, not for the wheat.
The panels themselves took up about a tenth of the field, which is the land the crop gave up outright to make room for them.
Wheat held in both. Clover slipped in one.
The rows changed the field in ways beyond light. Mean wind speed between the vertical panels fell by half, from about 5.4 miles an hour in the open to about 2.7.
Daytime air temperature between the panels ran significantly higher from April to September, and relative humidity was generally higher too while the crop was still sparse.
Those changes cut both ways for a farmer. Lower wind reduces water loss from leaves and can protect a young crop, and a warmer, damper corridor can also favor fungal disease.
The study recorded the shifts without tying them to yield, because one season cannot separate weather from structure. The authors call their findings preliminary.
Wind fell by half. Warmth rose between the rows.
Standing panels on edge costs output. The vertical system delivered about 914 kilowatt hours per kilowatt of capacity over the year, around 13 percent less than the tilted system’s 1,048.
What it gained was timing. Its two daily peaks arrive in the morning and late afternoon, which lines up better with when a grid actually needs power.
Combining food and power, the land equivalent ratio came out at 1.18 for wheat and 1.26 for grass clover under the vertical layout, against 1.08 and 1.03 under the tilted one.
The same two peak logic has been tried on a much smaller scale, with bifacial panels built into a garden fence.
At the other end of the scale, a plan near Rome sets out 90 megawatts of agrivoltaics with crops growing underneath.
Less power, better hours, more land.
The result comes from a single pilot of 89 kilowatts, split into two configurations of about 44 each, at one site and across one growing year.
The authors say directly that it is hard to extrapolate to other seasons with different water and nutrient stress, to crops with different shade and wind tolerance, or to other locations.
Public acceptance was the easier finding. In a virtual reality test with 102 Danish participants, the vertical layout scored 5.19 out of 7 against 4.59 for a conventional solar park.
The work was published in September 2025, and the yields, energy figures and microclimate data are set out in the paper.
The researchers, the funding and the field layout are described by the university.
The grass clover beside the upright rows held its ground, and one season is a start rather than a verdict.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and is multilingual.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and is multilingual.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and is multilingual.

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