Take A Ride on the Solarcoaster with Ted Gallagher

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Back in February, I attended a presentation by Ted Gallagher, who is the Vice President of Solar at MVE Group. MVE Group is an employee-owned electrical and solar contractor based in Ephrata, Pennsylvania that specializes in commercial solar projects.

Ted, a self-described former skeptic of agrivoltaics, explained how agrivoltaics (solar panels on farmland) retains farmers’ legacies by providing a promising source of long-term revenue while reducing emissions, restoring soil health and biodiversity, and guiding sustainable land use decisions.

Ted started his presentation by saying, “I’m not here to sell solar. I’m here to explain why it works.”

And that’s when I thought, “Climatific needs to interview this guy.”

Join us this week in our interview with Ted, whose perspective on putting solar panels on ag land largely shifted after he let the science and economics speak for itself.

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Agrivoltaics is a portmanteau—a blended word—of agriculture and photovoltaics. Photovoltaic cells are just a fancy term for solar cells which, when grouped together, comprise a solar array or panel.

So, if you didn’t already know what agrivoltaics is, you can probably piece it together now: Agrivoltaics is the practice of harnessing solar energy on agricultural land.

We’ll end our grammar lesson here and leave the rest of the agrivoltaics definition to Ted:

As Ted points out, using ag land for solar panels doesn’t mean we starve. In fact, successful agrivoltaics means quite the opposite. It means that farms can stay farms while also producing solar energy and maintaining or increasing food production.

Broadly speaking, there are three forms of agrivoltaics:

Hear more from Ted:

But bees are at the heart of pollinator planting, which is another form of agrivoltaics that involves growing native plants underneath solar panels on farm fields to attract pollinators, restore soil health and land maintenance costs, and improve crop yields and stormwater infiltration.

Ted breaks down the benefits of agrovoltaics in three ways—economic, environmental, and social. Together, Ted says solar panels on ag lands can help to keep farmers farmin’.

Farming is a tough business- profit margins are super thin and income fluctuates a bunch according to commodity prices, weather, and input costs.

The average farmer makes only $200-300 per acre in profit and, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, bankruptcies among farms rose by 46% in 2025 compared to the previous year.

Agrivoltaics introduces a predictable revenue stream through land leasing which generates more money than traditional farming on a crops-per-acre basis.

This lets farmers relax and focus on the good stuff: reinvesting in their operation, paying down debt, and, more importantly, keeping the farm in the family long term.

Let’s start with the obvious- agrivoltaics generates clean energy!

Ted says that the agrivoltaics juice is worth the emissions squeeze because pairing solar energy with ag lands saves both direct and indirect emissions.

Solar energy produces renewable energy with a carbon footprint that is significantly lower than that of traditional, non-renewable energy sources. “The typical 3 megawatt solar AC project in our region can produce enough electricity to power 400-600 homes with an actual footprint of about 15-21 acres,” Ted says.

Beyond direct emissions reductions, agrivoltaics saves emissions by coupling multiple land use types to break the historically perceived tradeoff of using land for food or for energy. It’s a sustainable land use strategy.

As we discussed earlier, agrivoltaics also restores soil health to return nonarable land back into the ring to be farmed and reduces water stress on plants to increase crop yields.

Ted says that the social benefits are where he thinks agrivoltaics “really gets overlooked.”

Agrivoltaics can preserve rural communities because farms that are financially viable are less likely to be sold off for residential or commercial development. And, as Ted told us, adding solar onto them brings in the monies in a reliable and significant way.

Agrivoltaics creates a more resilient system for land use that keeps land in ag, maintains open space, and supports the local economy that depends on the farming itself.

We dove into a few of the common misconceptions about agrivoltaics with Ted not only because he’s a subject matter expert on solar, but also because he used to align with them himself:

“We’re losing farm land to solar!”

It’s a valid concern to raise, and one that Ted hears all the time.

But the reality is that the land used for solar is a very small proportion of the total land used each year. And the land dedicated to solar is largely reversible. The same cannot be said when we build a natural gas refinery or a nuclear facility to produce energy.

“I stopped looking at solar as competing with farming and I started looking at solar as competing with development,” Ted explains.

“The mining for critical materials is bad!”

Ted’s take? Energy production is taxing on the environment one way or another. Solar requires mining to build the panels as well as the infrastructure that supports them, but the industry has made significant strides in reducing material intensity and increasing recycling.

It’s a tradeoff, Ted says. Solar is here for thirty years and, “when you have something that’s producing clean energy for that long, it’s healing that environmental impact a lot quicker than other industries.”

“Solar is expensive!”

The price of solar has dropped significantly over the past few decades- three years faster than the US Department of Energy projected it would. Now, solar is one of the most cost-competitive forms of energy in the US, especially at scale. We can thank advancements in technology, increased production, nifty financing models, and government incentives for the drop in price.

Ted feels this momentum in his work, too- he’s turned down 30 megawatts’ worth of projects in a week’s time because his plate is simply too full!

We asked Ted, “What’s the one message you want people to mull over when it comes to agrivoltaics?” In one minute, here’s what he said:

“Agrivoltaics isn’t about choosing between using land for farming or energy. It’s about making sure that we don’t have to choose at all…At the end of the day, if we want to protect farmland, we have to make it economically sustainable. And agrivoltaics is one of those tools that can help us do that.”

If you want to get in touch with Ted to talk more about agrivoltaics or Penn State wrestling, or to contest his favorite flavor of Penn State Creamery ice cream—it’s vanilla! 🍦—, you can reach him at [email protected], find him on LinkedIn, or visit MVEGroup.com.

Looking for an example of agrivoltaics in action? We present to you the DeSoto Solar Farm.

The DeSoto Solar Farm is a 2,100-acre plot of land in Lee County, Georgia that raises pasture-fed lamb, produces honey, and adds 250 megawatts to the electrical grid- enough to power 42,000 homes.

A triple whammy!

The sheep are restoring the farmland to a functional grassland ecosystem, and providing beehives for pollinators supports seed fertilization of crops in nearby fields.

The DeSoto Solar Farm has created over 900 jobs and generates more than $350,000,000 in capital investment for the local economy.

Where does the electricity go, you ask? It’s sent to power the homes of customers of the Green Power EMC—a renewable energy utility in Georgia—as well as Meta! Yup, you read that right. The solar energy produced on the DeSoto Solar Farm fulfills Meta’s promise to operate on 100% renewable energy in the state of Georgia.

Keep up! The Renewable Road Show isn’t slowing down any time soon, and we’re headed into next week on this bus that is surely super energy efficient and not emissions intensive whatsoever (and also looks way too fun to be in):

The next leg of our Renewable Road Show series is on wind energy- how it works, why it works, what’s keeping it from working better, and more- we’ll just have to see where the wind takes us. 🤠

Has our Renewable Road Show gotten any of your gears turning? Something on your mind? Let us know what you want to know!