The Garden Club of Denver October general meeting was held at Denver Botanic Gardens – Chatfield and featured the DBG Chatfield Community Solar Garden. A collaboration between DBG, the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and Denver’s Office of Climate Action, Sustainability, & Resiliency, the solar garden started construction in 2023, finished in 2024 and was designed to showcase Agrivolatics in a small scale setting.

Agrivoltaics is a growing international movement that combines solar panels with farming which fully utilizes the space under the solar panels. With the world’s population dramatically rising, we need to keep up with food production even though we are losing millions of acres of farm lands every year. How can we be more efficient and profitable with the land that we have left? How can farmers afford to keep their farms with rising costs? One way to make land more productive and bring in more income is to add solar panels that you can farm under.

The DBG Solar Garden has solar arrays set 8 feet above ground and allow ample space for humans and equipment to operate under them. The panels are bifacial meaning that they start the day facing east and finish the day facing west. Energy is collected from both the top and the bottom of the panels, so that light reflected from snow can be collected in the winter as well. Crops can be grown under the panels becuase they offer crucial shade protection from Colorado’s unrelenting sunshine. This shade and it’s cooler temps help DBG water 50% less than full sun.

Crops that grew this past summer under the panels were distributed to low income families. Of the 1.2 megawatt’s of electricity collected, 80 percent goes to powerd  nearly 200 families received discounted electricity through Energy Outreach Colorado, and the reamining 20% goes into the grid and thus offsets electricity useage at DBG’s Chatfield and York Street locations.

-story by. Alice H.

-Photos courtesy of Denver Botanic Gardens-