Sheep, lettuce and peppers are already thriving alongside solar panels on working farms across America — and a group of researchers believes corn could be next.
In the middle of an Indiana cornfield, photovoltaic panels stand on stilts 20 feet high — almost four times higher than most traditional solar arrays.
The first-of-its-kind experiment is at the center of three publications released in the past six months and led by Purdue University, as researchers argue there is a viable path to widespread solar implementation by U.S. corn growers.
Corn — a notoriously shade-intolerant plant — has been overlooked within the growing research around agrivoltaics, which has largely focused on linking solar with specialty crops that do well in shade. Solar panel arrays typically cast shadows on the ground throughout the day, which can hurt corn growth.
