Solar panels over crops ease heat stress for farmworkers

by Clarence Oxford

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 16, 2025

Mounting solar panels above crop fields can improve working conditions for farmworkers as well as produce food and electricity on the same land, according to research to be presented at the AGU 2025 Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Worker interviews and field measurements indicate that agrivoltaic systems provide shade, reduce exposure to extreme heat, and help farms avoid conditions associated with dangerous heat stress.

The study focuses on agrivoltaics, in which solar arrays are installed over or alongside crops so that energy and agriculture share the same acreage. Farmworkers reported that the panel structures give them access to shade during harvesting and other tasks, reducing how often they must work in direct sun. They described feeling less fatigued at the end of the day when able to rotate tasks under the panels and rest in shaded areas.

Lead researcher Talitha Neesham-McTiernan of the University of Arizona drew on four years of fieldwork on agrivoltaic farms, much of it conducted during hot Arizona summers. She observed that both scientists and laborers routinely scheduled the most strenuous tasks for times when they could work under the solar arrays. “It just seemed to be something that people in these systems were doing, but nobody in the research area was talking about it,” she said.

Heat poses a major occupational risk in agriculture, where workers are estimated to be 35 times more likely to die from heat-related illness than people in non-agricultural jobs. Neesham-McTiernan noted that climate change is expected to intensify this risk, increasing the value of practical strategies that can limit heat stress in the field. “[Agrivoltaics] isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution,” she said. “It can’t be used everywhere. But with the threat of heat, we need a catalog of ways we can protect farmworkers. Without them, we can’t feed ourselves. Protecting them and their bodies should be paramount to everyone.”

Farmworkers pointed to several specific benefits from working under the panels. They reported that shade from the arrays reduced sun exposure during peak midday hours and that being able to step in and out of shaded rows helped them manage heat through the day. Neesham-McTiernan recounted one worker’s description of how the arrangement left them feeling less exhausted by the end of a shift, which in turn affected their energy levels outside work.

The shaded structures also help keep drinking water cooler, which is critical for preventing heat illness. “They can pop their bottles under the panels and they stay cool all day,” Neesham-McTiernan said, “rather than it being, as one of the farmworkers described it, like drinking tea.” Workers emphasized that access to cool water throughout the workday supported their ability to keep working safely in high temperatures.

Beyond shade and water, the panel supports themselves offer a physical aid during long hours in the field. “Every farmworker said one benefit was being able to lean against the beams that hold up the panels, just to take the weight off a bit,” Neesham-McTiernan noted. She said those small ergonomic advantages would not appear in sensor data alone but clearly affected daily comfort.

To quantify the thermal environment, the research team installed sensors that recorded air temperature, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation on agrivoltaic farms and on comparable open fields. They used these data to calculate wet bulb globe temperature, a composite heat-stress index commonly used to identify hazardous outdoor working conditions. Comparing the two settings allowed the team to link worker experiences with objective changes in environmental stress.

Measurements showed that agrivoltaic fields could lower wet bulb globe temperature by up to 5.5 degrees Celsius, or about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, relative to open fields. Neesham-McTiernan estimated that this drop can mark the difference between conditions where work must stop and conditions where workers can continue with mandated rest breaks, such as pausing every hour. She stressed that when these marginal gains accumulate over a full workday, a growing season and a career, their impact on health and productivity becomes substantial.

The study also compared workers’ perceptions with sensor readings across different parts of the farms and times of day. In some cases, participants and instruments did not fully agree on which areas felt hottest or most comfortable. Neesham-McTiernan argued that assessing occupational heat stress requires both physiological and experiential information, because metrics alone cannot capture how people actually feel and function during prolonged outdoor labor.

Neesham-McTiernan plans to extend the research to farms in other climate zones to determine whether agrivoltaic heat-mitigation benefits hold in different environmental conditions. Future work may include closer tracking of physiological indicators and health outcomes, aiming to link the observed microclimate changes under solar panels directly to worker health metrics. The project highlights thermal comfort and safety as central factors in evaluating agrivoltaic deployment, alongside energy output and crop performance.

Research Report:Farmworker experiences reveal heat mitigation advantages of agrivoltaics