Agrivoltaics in Canada: Can You Farm Under Solar Panels and Get Paid Twice?

The argument against solar on farms has always been one sentence: it takes land out of production. Agrivoltaics is the answer to that sentence. You design the array so the land stays in production. Animals graze between the rows, or crops grow under raised panels.

This guide covers what the public thinks, what the research shows, what it costs, what developers will pay you, and which provinces let you do it. Everything links to a source.

In December 2023, researchers at Western University surveyed 1,595 adults across every province and territory. Uzair Jamil and Joshua Pearce published the results in the Journal of Rural Studies in 2026. It is the first national picture of public opinion on agrivoltaics in Canada.

• 85.8% of Canadians support agrivoltaics.
• Stilt-mounted systems — panels high enough to farm underneath — drew the strongest support at 92.6%. Greenhouse-integrated solar and solar grazing came next.
• Panels over perennial crops and orchards were the least popular, and still cleared 80%.
• Nova Scotia (95.6%), Manitoba (93.0%) and British Columbia (92.9%) were most supportive. Yukon was lowest.
• Opposition came from resistance to change, aesthetics, and lack of awareness — which the authors linked to misinformation.

Path 1 — Lease the land, then graze it

A developer builds the array and pays you rent. Reported Alberta lease rates run about $700 to $900 per acre per year, with annual increases. Then the developer needs the grass kept down for 25 years. That is a budget you can capture.

Mowing a solar site is slow. It burns fuel, damages cables and panels, and puts a mower deck next to live equipment. A 2023 study of utility-scale sites found a median mowing cost of US$299 per hectare per year. Sheep grazing services came in at a median of US$279 — cheaper. Developers say the sheep do a better job under the panels, where a mower cannot reach. Canadian reports put the vegetation payment to farmers at roughly $200 an acre on top of the lease.

The sheep themselves are the third income. A January 2025 study from Western University and Ivey Business School modelled solar shepherding in Ontario at two scales: a 200 kW site and a 465 MW site. Breeding flocks returned 16 to 31% on investment. Buying lambs at auction each year returned 22 to 43%. The authors compared the incomes to those of doctors and engineers.

Path 2 — Build your own array and keep farming under it

If the array is yours, the first paycheque is the electricity. It offsets your farm bill or exports under your province's rules. The second is whatever you grow or graze on the same ground. Our farm-solar payback article covers the electricity side by province. The federal 30% Clean Technology credit applies to a ground-mount array on an incorporated farm — see the farm-solar grants article for the full stack. What agrivoltaics adds is a design question: how high, how far apart, and which crop.

The Travers Solar Project near Lomond, 170 km southeast of Calgary, is the largest solar farm in Canada. It has 465 MW, 1.3 million panels and about 3,300 acres. Yetwood Farms grazes it. That is a fifth-generation family operation run by Eric Steeves. Canada's National Observer reported in July 2026 that Yetwood runs 2,000 breeding ewes on the site. It plans 3,500 within a year and about 8,000 head within five. The goal is to graze the whole project with no machinery.

The flock works rotating paddocks behind electric fence, after a spring aerial seeding of a tame grass mix. The crew calls it mob solar grazing. Steeves told reporters the grazing is improving the soil.

Two research threads are turning that one farm into a method:

1. Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing with virtual fencing

Alberta Beef Producers report agrivoltaic projects designed around AMP grazing. They use high-tensile electric fence now and collared invisible fencing as the technology matures. Olds College's livestock technology centre is running a funded trial of virtual-fence collars against polywire on 30 cattle near Nanton. Alberta's Results Driven Agriculture Research agency backs it. Virtual fencing is the piece that makes rotational grazing practical between panel rows without miles of temporary fence.

2. Crops under panels

Olds College is planning a multi-year program testing up to six agrivoltaic models. They include canola, faba beans and wheat in rotation, plus pollinator and habitat effects. The college hosted the first Alberta agrivoltaics conference on June 26, 2025 with the not-for-profit Agrivoltaics Canada.

The science is young but it is not thin. A 2025 systematic review of field studies found water-use efficiency improved 20 to 47% under panels. Shade cuts evaporation and heat stress. Yield depends on the crop and how much shade it gets. Low shade costs little. Heavy shade costs more. Shade-loving crops can gain.

Nova Scotia

Dalhousie's Agricultural Campus in Truro worked with the Nova Scotia Community College to model agrivoltaics across the 26 crops grown there. It found no yield effect on 11 crops and a yield increase on 10 — raspberries among them. The team also tested vertical panels as deer fencing around research plots.

Ontario

A 2026 Western University trial grew organic bush beans under 13 panel layouts on a one-acre plot in London. A 44%-transparent crystalline-silicon layout kept bean yields intact. Once electricity was counted, the acre produced 340% more total revenue.

Strawberries

A separate Canadian study on strawberry agrivoltaics in controlled environments estimated the national potential at 1,558 to 2,861 GWh a year.

Sheep need only a standard ground mount with the lowest panel edge high enough to pass under. Crops need more. That means wider row spacing, panels raised on stilts, or vertical two-sided rows that leave the ground open. That costs money.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory puts the agrivoltaic premium at 5 to 52% per watt, depending on the design. Vertical rows run around 20%. Fraunhofer ISE — the German institute that wrote the field's guideline — puts a five-metre elevated system at about 38% more than a standard ground mount.

Rules were checked September 10, 2026. Alberta's guidelines and Ontario's procurement terms are the two most likely to change — both are on our monthly recheck list.

1. Decide which path you are on. Developer lease plus grazing contract, or your own array plus your own crop. The economics, the permits and the partners are different.
2. If a developer is calling, ask about vegetation management before you sign the lease. Ask what they budget for mowing, whether they will contract grazing, and for how many years. Negotiate the grazing contract with the lease, not after.
3. If it is your array, size it to your load first. Then design row spacing and panel height around the crop or animal, not the other way around. Sheep need roughly a metre of clearance. Cattle and crops need more.
4. Talk to the people already doing it. Agrivoltaics Canada, chaired by Patrick Gossage, runs conferences and connects farmers with researchers. Alberta's Solar Sheep, co-founded by farmer Janna Grier, has grazed under panels for years.
5. Bring the survey to the council meeting. 85.8% is a useful number when the objection is "nobody wants this."

Every agrivoltaic project starts with the same three inputs: your province's rules, your acreage and load, and which livestock or crop you already run. Our farm calculator handles the electricity side. For the grazing lease conversation, come armed with the vegetation-management numbers in the table above.

• Jamil, U. and Pearce, J.M. — Social acceptance of agrivoltaics in Canada: Insights on public perceptions across technologies and provinces from a nationwide survey, Journal of Rural Studies, vol. 123, 2026; coverage in pv magazine, February 25, 2026
• Canada's National Observer — Grazing for the grid, July 15, 2026; Alberta Farmer Express — Solar and sheep provide valuable farm diversification
• Western News — Grazing "solar" sheep offer lucrative solution for farmers, January 2025; The Conversation — "Solar shepherds" earn big by grazing sheep on solar farms
• Sustainability, 2023 — Vegetation Management Cost and Maintenance Implications of Different Ground Covers at Utility-Scale Solar Sites
• Alberta Beef Producers — Solar Grazing: Examining agrivoltaics in Alberta; Olds College — Invisible virtual fences could change rural landscape; Sharing the land with solar could transform farming; First-ever agrivoltaics conference
• Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2025 — Impacts of agrivoltaic systems on microclimate, water use efficiency, and crop yield: a systematic review
• Canada's National Observer — Pairing unlikely bedfellows: agriculture and solar panels, May 20, 2026; CBC — Blending agriculture and solar could benefit Nova Scotia
• Sustainability, 2026 — Sustainable Food–Energy Co-Production: Agrivoltaic Configurations That Maintain Organic Bean Yields and Enhance Farm Revenue
• Jamil, U. and Pearce, J.M. — The Agrivoltaic Potential of Canada, Sustainability, 2023; Strawberry agrivoltaics in Canada, 2025
• NREL agrivoltaic cost premium and Fraunhofer ISE elevated-system multiplier via Techno-economic modeling for agrivoltaics and Fraunhofer ISE, Agrivoltaics: Opportunities for Agriculture and the Energy Transition
• Bennett Jones — Alberta government provides updated policy guidance for renewable development; Alberta Utilities Commission — Rule 007 interim information requirements, August 26, 2025; PV Tech — Alberta tightens permitting rules for renewable energy projects on farmland
• PV Tech — Ontario launches energy procurement, bans solar on prime agricultural land; Torys — IESO LT2 RFP draft; Canada's National Observer — Solar and prime farmland can coexist, just not in Ontario
• Provincial Agricultural Land Commission — The ALC Act and ALR Regulations (Renewable Energy Projects (Streamlined Permitting) Act, July 1, 2025)
• Solar Energies in Canada — Solar farms on your land (reported Alberta lease and vegetation-management rates)
• Agrivoltaics Canada — Agrivoltaics Canada organization page