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“We were leaving our palm size,” said Arizona researcher Greg Bairon-Gaford.

For 12 years, Baron-Gafard Agrivoltic is working in the integration of solar arrays. This exercise includes crops or other vegetation, such as pollination-friendly plants, under solar panels, and sometimes grazing livestock in this greenery. Although a relatively new concept, at least 604 agarivoltic sites pop up across the United States, according to which Openi,

Researchers like Beron-Gford feel that in addition to generating carbon-free electricity, agarivoltaic can offer a ray of hope for agriculture in a rapidly warm and dried south-west, as the shadows made by these systems have been found to reduce irrigation needs and reduce heat stress on crops. In addition, the cooling effects of growing plants under solar arrays can actually improve panels.

But challenges remain, including some farmers’ perspectives about practice and funding difficulties.

Aergia

While renewable electricity from sources such as solar panels is one of the most often touched energy solutions, which helps reduce climate change to help reduce carbon pollution, the warming climate itself is making its work difficult for the solar arrays, making it hard to do its work for the solar arrays. An optimal functioning temperature for panels is around 75 ° Fahnheit, he explained. In addition, an increase in any temperature reduces the efficiency of photovoltaic cells.

“You can quickly see how our changing climate of switching to more renewable energy is sensitive to changing climate,” he said.

This problem is particularly relevant in the South -West, where historically hot temperatures are continuously rising. For example, Tuxon saw the record of 112 days triple-tunks in 2024, according to the National Weather Service data, and American environmental protection agency The report experienced a high average temperature between 2000 and 2023, compared to the long-term average from 1895 to 2023.