How Virginia’s Roundabout Meadows Could Transform Farming: Solar Panels, Vegetables and ‘Ripple Effects’

Overview

The Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) in Virginia is piloting a half-acre agrivoltaics demonstration called Roundabout Meadows that pairs a 42-panel solar array with in-ground vegetable rows and raised beds. Recognized as the 2025 North American Agrivoltaics Awards (NAAA) “Plan of the Year,” the project aims to show how food production and solar energy can coexist on the same land and boost farm resilience and income.

What is agrivoltaics?

Agrivoltaics refers to the dual use of land for both agriculture and solar electricity generation. Across the U.S., agrivoltaic sites take several forms: the land beneath panels is often managed as pollinator-friendly habitat, used for livestock grazing, or planted directly with crops beneath and between arrays. Each approach has different benefits for biodiversity, farm operations, and energy output.

Roundabout Meadows — the demonstration

PEC designed Roundabout Meadows as a proof-of-concept with four rows of vegetables planted directly in the ground beneath and between the panels to mimic a traditional farm layout, alongside additional raised beds to test alternate planting systems. The project tests practical questions — including the costs and adaptations required for nontraditional locations such as urban sites, parking lots, or other impermeable surfaces.

“We want to share it with everybody, because we know that we can't predict who might benefit from it exactly,”

— Teddy Pitsiokos, PEC community farm manager

Scale and potential

Data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) show roughly 62,000 acres of agrivoltaic installations produced about 10 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2024. The U.S. Department of Energy projects solar could reach 1 terawatt of grid-connected capacity by 2035 — a target that would require an estimated 5.7 million acres, much of which overlaps land attractive for farming.

Careful research and development into co-location of crops and solar could expand both food and energy production on the same acreage, offering farmers an additional revenue stream and resilience as they contend with tariffs, inflation, labor shortages, and extreme weather.

Other research and next steps

Similar efforts include Rutgers University’s agrivoltaic sites in New Jersey, which test crop–solar pairings to find optimal configurations for different plants and climates. PEC intends to share results broadly to help communities, landowners, and policymakers assess when and how agrivoltaics makes sense locally.

Why it matters

As rising temperatures and new energy demands (for example, from data centers) strain existing systems, multiuse approaches like agrivoltaics offer a pragmatic path to increase renewable generation without sacrificing agricultural productivity. Demonstration projects such as Roundabout Meadows provide the practical evidence farmers and communities need to weigh costs, benefits and design choices.