Sunzaun - Vertical Solar

Sunzaun - Vertical Solar Sunzaun is a vertical solar solution that shifts the limits of renewable energy production.

This approach offers applications that conventional systems can't realize.

New independent research from UC Davis is putting numbers behind something we've believed for a while: vertical solar pa...
09/01/2026

New independent research from UC Davis is putting numbers behind something we've believed for a while: vertical solar panels don't just generate power — they change how crops handle heat stress.

The site researchers are studying? Our vertical panels.

Researchers tracking tomatoes found rows closest to the panels showed dramatically less sunscald, with smaller but healthier fruit development, compared to rows further from the panels.

It's still early-stage research (CDFA-funded, multi-year), and not every voice in the piece is convinced agrivoltaics is ready for widespread funding yet. That's a fair challenge — and exactly why real-world, large-scale test sites like this one matter. The question isn't whether the concept works in theory. It's what happens row by row, in the field, under real heat.

Proud to be the infrastructure researchers are using to find out.

08/31/2026

A European agrivoltaics developer just raised capital specifically to scale vertical bifacial deployment — and the numbers behind the raise say a lot about where this market is heading. Their vertical systems are posting spot-market revenue gains that run counter to the broader solar market trend, with a value edge over conventional solar exceeding 60% in the first half of 2026.

That's not a fluke of one company's ex*****on. It's the underlying physics of vertical bifacial: generation shifted to the morning and evening, away from the midday glut that's increasingly cannibalizing solar's value everywhere. As more capacity comes online, that timing advantage only grows.

We're seeing the same dynamic play out here — vertical isn't the alternative approach anymore. It's the one the market is paying up for.

EPCs are very good at maximizing a solar array.But are we maximizing the entire site?For high-demand customers—data cent...
08/29/2026

EPCs are very good at maximizing a solar array.

But are we maximizing the entire site?

For high-demand customers—data centers being the obvious example—the challenge isn't simply generating the most solar energy possible.

It's delivering more usable power across more of the day.

That’s where combining solar geometries gets interesting.

Fixed-tilt PV delivers strong midday production.
Vertical bifacial can add a complementary morning and afternoon generation profile.
Battery storage shifts energy into later hours.
And vertical can turn perimeters, narrow corridors, setbacks, and other constrained spaces into additional generating areas.

This isn't vertical vs. conventional solar.

It's conventional PV + vertical bifacial + storage, designed together around the customer's load.

Because your customer doesn't only need power at noon.

Don’t just maximize the solar field. Maximize the site.

A recent pv magazine piece on Italy's agrivoltaics scene makes a point worth sitting with: even with dedicated agrivolta...
08/26/2026

A recent pv magazine piece on Italy's agrivoltaics scene makes a point worth sitting with: even with dedicated agrivoltaics laws on the books, deployment hasn't accelerated the way many expected. Local developers say the legal framework alone hasn't been the unlock.

That tracks with what we see on the ground. Policy can open the door, but it doesn't solve the practical questions that actually determine whether a project gets built: Can farm equipment still move through the rows? Does the racking design work with the crop, not against it? Is the system actually maintainable over a 25-year lifespan?

Italy remains one of the most closely watched agrivoltaics markets in the world for good reason — the pilot projects coming out of it are genuinely pushing the field forward. But it's a good reminder that permitting frameworks and real-world adoption are two different problems, and the second one is where the engineering has to do the work.

Big-picture validation this week: reporting on U.S. solar development is now calling out agrivoltaics as one of the fast...
08/24/2026

Big-picture validation this week: reporting on U.S. solar development is now calling out agrivoltaics as one of the fastest-growing models in the industry — nearly 700 installations, ~85,000 acres, and ~14 GW nationwide, up from a fraction of that just five years ago.

We don't need the headlines to tell us that — we're living it. This is our vertical array at UC Davis, where researchers are studying tomato yield, soil moisture, and microclimate effects alongside power generation. Same land, doing double duty.

The industry is catching up to what working farms have known for a while: land can produce food and energy at once.

Pictured: the Sunzaun installation at the UC Davis

American farmland suddenly has two suitors. Only one of them lets the farm keep farming.pv magazine USA published a piec...
08/20/2026

American farmland suddenly has two suitors. Only one of them lets the farm keep farming.

pv magazine USA published a piece this week that connects the numbers: over 1,200 data centers already operate in the US, and nearly 1,800 more are planned — a pipeline that would triple capacity. The large ones want a thousand-plus acres each, and underproducing farmland is exactly what their developers are shopping for. Farming-dependent counties have noticed; some have already banned data centers outright.

Solar is the other suitor — and the terms are different. Recent farm-economy survey data shows more than half of farmers discussing solar leases were offered $1,000 per acre or more per year, often beating the net return from crops on the same ground. And unlike a sale, a lease is income the farm collects while staying a farm — the kind of predictable revenue agriculture almost never gets to count on.

But here's the detail in the article most readers will scroll past, and it's the one that matters: a handful of counties have quietly flipped the script on solar developers. One Colorado county now allows solar above 20 acres on working farmland only if the design keeps farming underneath. A Pennsylvania county restricts building on its best soils without it. Another Colorado county approved an 80 MW project only after sheep grazing and irrigation were written into the plan.

Read that again: agrivoltaics isn't just a nicer way to build solar in those counties. It's the price of admission.

We've been making this argument for years — that keeping the land visibly farming is a permitting strategy, not a design preference. These counties just turned the strategy into law. And with agrivoltaics still under 5% of US installed solar capacity, the developers who learn to design for the farm first are walking into an open lane.

The land is going to work for someone. The question every farm community is now asking: does it keep working for the farm?

If you develop, permit, or farm: is dual-use showing up as a requirement in your county yet — or is it still a bargaining chip?

Photo credit: Rutgars Agrivoltaics Program, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA

08/19/2026

Four states are paying landowners for agrivoltaic electricity. Others are cutting property taxes for it. California is doing neither.

Massachusetts and New Jersey compensate landowners directly for the power their agrivoltaic systems produce. Maryland, Nevada, and Colorado offer property tax exemptions for agrivoltaics projects. Colorado, New Jersey, and New York are funding research and demonstration projects. Oregon, Colorado, and Connecticut have stood up legislative task forces to study the space.

California — the state producing more solar power than anywhere else in the country — isn't on a single one of these lists.

Farmers here are left to figure out dual-use land economics on their own, without the compensation structures, tax relief, or research support that states with a fraction of California's solar capacity are already building. The land, the sun, and the demand are all here. The policy infrastructure isn't.

If California wants to keep its lead in solar, agrivoltaics can't be an afterthought in Sacramento.

Last week we shared research showing people accept solar when they can see the land still farming. The response told us ...
08/17/2026

Last week we shared research showing people accept solar when they can see the land still farming. The response told us something: everyone agrees education is the unlock. Almost nobody has a playbook for it.

So here's ours — how agrivoltaics actually gets understood in a farm community, drawn from what works in the field.

Start with who does the talking. The developer is the least trusted voice in the room. Cooperative extension agents are among the most trusted in American agriculture — and most have never been briefed on agri-PV. One field day with your county extension office outlasts any ad campaign. Better still: let a farmer who already works between panels tell the story. A peer with mud on their boots converts more skeptics in ten minutes than an engineer with slides converts in an hour.

Go where people already gather. A demo row or scale model at the county fair. Ten minutes at the farm bureau chapter meeting. An op-ed in the county weekly — 4,000 readers, and they're the same 4,000 who show up to permitting hearings. The coffee shop conversation beats the municipal hearing every time; skepticism softens as formality drops.

Show it at eye level. This is what the research actually found: acceptance forms up close, where people can see the land is still farmed. So open the gates. Farm days and site visits are the highest-converting tactic that exists — nothing argues like standing between rows with crops at your feet. Take county commissioners to a working site before the vote, not after opposition hardens. And at hearings, retire the aerial site plan — it reads as an industrial facility. Show the view from the road, from the neighbor's porch, from inside the rows.

Answer the hard questions before they're asked. Land loss. Glare. Property values. What happens in year 30. The project that volunteers its own tough questions owns the room; the one that waits to be asked looks like it's hiding something. Publish the community math while you're at it — lease income, tax base, who benefits and how.

None of this is a communications trick. It's the same principle as the technology itself: keep the farming visible, and the rest follows.

What would you add? Genuinely asking — the best tactics we've seen came from communities, not companies.

The biggest obstacle to solar in farm country isn't engineering. It's the county meeting.We wrote last week about Virgin...
08/14/2026

The biggest obstacle to solar in farm country isn't engineering. It's the county meeting.

We wrote last week about Virginia, where nearly two-thirds of counties had restricted or banned large-scale solar before the state's new agrivoltaics law. That pattern repeats across the country: projects don't usually die on economics. They die on opposition.

Which is why the most interesting agrivoltaics study of the past year isn't only about crops.

Researchers at Aarhus University ran a full-scale vertical agrivoltaic pilot in the Danish countryside — and measured two things at once. The agronomy first: wheat and grass-clover mixtures grew just as well between the vertical panel rows as in open fields. No yield penalty. The panels occupy only about a tenth of the field, and producing food and power together required up to a quarter less land than producing them separately.

Then the part almost nobody studies: what people think. The team put more than 100 participants into an immersive VR version of the landscape. Vertical agrivoltaics were rated significantly more positively than conventional solar parks — and the effect was strongest up close, where viewers could see the land was still being farmed. Participants read the vertical systems as more innovative and more environmentally friendly than the solar parks they're used to opposing.

Read that finding the way a developer should: social license is infrastructure. A project the neighbors can accept is a project that gets permitted, built, and left alone for 30 years. A technically perfect project the community rejects produces zero kilowatt-hours.

The panels that keep the land visibly farming aren't just an agronomic choice. They're a permitting strategy.

If you develop or permit projects in agricultural communities: what does opposition actually sound like where you work — and what has ever changed a skeptic's mind?

The agrivoltaics event we circle on the calendar every year just opened registration.The 4th California Germany Agrivolt...
08/12/2026

The agrivoltaics event we circle on the calendar every year just opened registration.

The 4th California Germany Agrivoltaics Conference lands November 12 at UC Davis — and this year's theme says everything about where this field is headed: Scaling Agrivoltaics — Technology Innovation & Farm Economics.

Notice what that agenda is really about: money. The roundtables tackle what installations actually cost, what revenue farmers can realistically expect, how lenders and insurers weigh the risk, which panel systems fit which operations, and what permitting truly requires. When a conference stops asking "does it work?" and starts asking "how do the loans get underwritten?" — that's a technology growing up.

The format is the draw. This isn't a trade show. It's farmers, researchers, developers, policymakers, and farming associations from California and Germany in one ballroom, comparing field data from pilot sites on both sides of the Atlantic. Past editions have drawn 200+ attendees and 30+ expert speakers, and the conversations in the hallways are worth the ticket alone.

And a day earlier, there's a guided field visit to see working installations and crops on the ground — approval required and spots genuinely limited, which is the practical reason to register early rather than in November.

For us, this one is personal. Our vertical system has been producing alongside research crops at UC Davis for four years — this conference happens a short walk from panels we think about every day. And bridging German engineering with California agriculture is not just the event's mission; it's ours.

November 12. UC Davis. Registration link in the comments — and if you're coming, tell us. We'd like to shake your hand there.

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384 Bel Marin Keys Boulevard , Suite 230
Novato, CA
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