Mapping Agrivoltaic Opportunity: Identifying Dual-Use Solar Sites at Scale
- Ishan Bhattarai
- 22 hours ago
- 6 min read
The land acquisition landscape for solar developers is getting more competitive and more complex. As projects push into agricultural regions, a new siting strategy is gaining serious traction: agrivoltaics, the co-location of solar generation with active agricultural use. For developers who know where to look, dual-use sites represent a compelling opportunity. For those who don't have the right data infrastructure, they represent a minefield of misidentified parcels, incompatible soil types, and regulatory surprises.
This resource breaks down what agrivoltaic development actually looks like in practice, what makes a site suitable, and how leading developers are using data to identify the best opportunities at scale- before the competition does.
The Agrivoltaic Opportunity
Agrivoltaics refers to the simultaneous use of land for both solar energy production and agricultural activity. Rather than converting farmland to an exclusively industrial use, agrivoltaic systems are designed so that crops, livestock, or pollinator habitat can coexist with operating solar arrays. Panels are mounted at heights that accommodate farming equipment or grazing animals beneath them, and row spacing is calibrated to balance energy yield with light availability for whatever agricultural use is active on the ground. According to LandGate data, there are nearly 600 agrivoltaic projects operating in the US.
The concept has been around for decades, but adoption is accelerating sharply. The U.S. agrivoltaic installed base has grown from a handful of pilot projects to hundreds of operational sites, and the development pipeline is expanding fast. Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimate that even a modest fraction of U.S. cropland converted to agrivoltaic use could meet a substantial share of national electricity demand, without displacing the agricultural productivity that communities and supply chains depend on.
For solar developers, the opportunity is multi-dimensional:
Expanded land access. Agricultural land is abundant in regions with strong solar resources, like the Sun Belt, Midwest, and Mountain West. Agrivoltaic structures allow developers to access land that would otherwise face resistance from farming communities or agricultural zoning restrictions.
Reduced community opposition. Projects that preserve agricultural use tend to face lower opposition from local governments and farming constituents. In jurisdictions where solar-on-farmland has become politically contentious, the agrivoltaic framing and the genuine continuation of farm income for landowners meaningfully changes the permitting dynamic.
Landowner economics. Solar lease income layered on top of continued farming revenue is a compelling proposition for landowners, particularly on marginal land where crop yields are already under pressure. This dual income stream can be the deciding factor that closes a land option.
Regulatory alignment. A growing number of states, including Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, and Colorado, have introduced agrivoltaic-specific legislation or incentive programs. Developers who can demonstrate agricultural compatibility are increasingly positioned to benefit from these frameworks in some jurisdictions.
The bottom line: agrivoltaics is not a compromise strategy for sites that couldn't support standard ground-mount solar. For many developers, it's becoming the preferred strategy because it unlocks land, lowers opposition, and improves landowner relationships simultaneously. The challenge is identifying the right sites efficiently, at a scale that matches active development pipelines.
Size & Configuration of Agrivoltaic Projects
Agrivoltaic projects span a wide range of scales, but the economics and configuration differ meaningfully across project sizes.
Community-Scale Agrivoltaics
Community-scale projects (under 5 MW) are typically co-located with specialty crops, like berries, leafy greens, herbs, and shade-tolerant vegetables, or managed as pollinator habitat. Panel heights and row spacing are engineered specifically to allow light transmission and farm equipment access beneath the arrays. These projects are increasingly popular in states with favorable dual-use tariff structures or agricultural preservation mandates.
Mid-Scale Agrivoltaics
Mid-scale projects (5–50 MW) more commonly pair with grazing operations, particularly sheep, which are ideally suited to the space beneath panel arrays. Agrivoltaic grazing reduces vegetation management costs significantly, creating a direct financial benefit that strengthens project economics.
Utility-Scale Agrivoltaics
Utility-scale agrivoltaic projects (50 MW+) are emerging across the Midwest and Southwest, with configurations designed for row crops or large-scale pollinator corridors. These projects require careful panel tilt and spacing engineering but have demonstrated that agricultural productivity losses can be minimized. In some cases, yields of shade-tolerant crops actually improve under partial shading.
Understanding which configuration fits which land type is step one. Identifying those land types efficiently is the harder problem.
Mapping Dual-Use Solar Opportunity: Considerations for Siting Agrivoltaic Projects
Not every agricultural parcel is an agrivoltaic candidate. Developers who try to treat dual-use siting like standard ground-mount solar siting quickly run into problems.
The key variables that determine agrivoltaic project feasibility include:
Soil classification and agricultural productivity. Prime farmland and highly productive soils, including many NRCS Class I and II soils often face the greatest regulatory scrutiny. In many jurisdictions, developing on prime farmland requires mitigation or is outright restricted. However, marginal agricultural soils like degraded land, Class III and IV soils are often ideal agrivoltaic candidates, since the economics of farming alone are poor, making a solar lease more attractive to landowners. Soil data is non-negotiable for prioritizing your pipeline.
Land use zoning and agricultural protections. County-level zoning varies dramatically. Some jurisdictions have enacted solar-specific agricultural zoning overlays; others apply blanket restrictions on solar in AG zones. Identifying parcels where dual-use solar is permitted or where conditional use permits are routinely granted requires current, parcel-level zoning data.
Existing agricultural operations. Active farming generates both opportunity and constraint. A landowner already running a grazing operation may be highly receptive to a solar lease that generates additional income. A row crop operator locked into a long-term farming contract is a different conversation. Understanding land use at the parcel level matters.
Grid infrastructure proximity. Access to transmission and available capacity remains the binding constraint for most utility-scale projects. Agrivoltaics doesn't change the interconnection math, but co-location with agricultural land can sometimes open pathways to distribution-level interconnection for smaller projects that bypass the most congested interconnection queues.
Comparable land transactions. Knowing what solar lease rates and land sale prices look like in a target geography informs both landowner negotiations and project proforma accuracy. Markets with high agricultural land values require stronger solar economics to compete; markets with depressed farmland values create easier land acquisition conditions.
How to Identify Dual-Use Sites at Scale
Manual site identification processes that include pulling county parcel data, cross-referencing NRCS soil surveys, checking zoning codes one jurisdiction at a time don’t scale. Developers running active pipelines across multiple states need a system.
LandGate's platform brings together the data layers that matter most for agrivoltaic prospecting in a single environment:
Soil and agricultural data: NRCS soil classifications and land capability overlaid at the parcel level, so you can screen for marginal farmland at scale without touching a USDA database manually.
Zoning and land use layers: Current parcel-level zoning across the country, enabling rapid screening for solar-compatible agricultural zones and flagging parcels with agricultural protections that require additional diligence.
Solar infrastructure data: Interconnection queue positions, ATC data, and existing agrivoltaic project maps give developers a clear picture of grid conditions and competitive activity in any target region.
Comparable land transactions: Actual sale and lease transaction data to inform landowner conversations and underwriting.
For developers who want to move even faster, LandGate's AI Agent changes the prospecting workflow entirely. Instead of configuring filters and toggling layers manually, developers can describe what they're looking for in plain language- "find parcels within a 100 mile radius of Dallas, Texas with 50-100 buildable acres and within 1 mile of a distribution line that has at least 2MW of hosting capacity"- and the AI Agent surfaces matching sites directly. The AI Agent also integrates securely with your organization's own LLM environment, meaning your proprietary deal data, screening criteria, and underwriting models stay within your infrastructure while leveraging LandGate's national datasets.
The result is a prospecting workflow that collapses weeks of manual research into hours.
The Future of Agrivoltaics
The agrivoltaic market is moving from demonstration projects to mainstream development. Federal support through the Inflation Reduction Act has accelerated investment in dual-use solar research, and several states have introduced dedicated agrivoltaic permitting pathways that streamline approval for compliant projects. Landowner familiarity with agrivoltaic arrangements is growing, which is reducing the educational burden on development teams during lease negotiations.
For solar developers, the window to build a first-mover advantage in agrivoltaic site control is still open- but it's narrowing. The developers who will dominate this space over the next five years are the ones building systematic, data-driven prospecting pipelines today. That means having the right data layers, the right analytical tools, and the speed to move from screening to landowner contact before competitors identify the same parcels.
Agrivoltaics isn't a niche. It's the next major land strategy for utility-scale solar, and the data infrastructure to execute it already exists.
Ready to build your agrivoltaic pipeline? LandGate's platform gives solar developers the soil data, zoning intelligence, infrastructure data, and AI-powered search tools to identify dual-use sites at scale- faster than any manual workflow.
