Special to the HT
MEEKER | When Byron Kominek stood before Rio Blanco County commissioners during a June 9 work session, his message was simple: rural communities don’t have to choose between agriculture and solar energy.
The Boulder County farmer and owner of Jack’s Solar Garden shared lessons learned from operating one of Colorado’s best-known agrivoltaic projects, where crops, livestock and solar panels coexist on the same land.
“I always want our commissioners to understand that there’s a different way to do it, that they don’t have to choose one way or the other,” Kominek said. “They have an opportunity to see how agriculture and solar arrays can work together.”
During the work session with the commissioners, Kominek discussed how cattle and sheep can successfully graze beneath solar installations while benefiting from additional shade during the hottest months of the year.
Kominek encouraged local governments to study examples from around the country and consider policies that allow agricultural uses to continue alongside solar development.
“Every community is a unique community,” he said. “However, we can always learn the lessons of other areas in our country to see what might work better for our own community.”
He said successful agrivoltaic projects depend on thoughtful design. Panel height, wire management and minimizing land disturbance during construction can determine whether a solar site remains useful for agricultural production for decades.
“Most livestock are interested in eating and sleeping and then starting it all over again,” Kominek said. “They’re not inclined to go out and destroy everything.”
He also stressed the importance of protecting soil during construction.
“If you destroy the land starting up, it takes a really long time to bring land back around to being useful after you’ve graded it,” Kominek said. “Grading destroys the top layers of soil.”
When Kominek returned to his family’s Boulder County property after leaving a job with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Africa, he wasn’t planning to become one of Colorado’s leading voices on agrivoltaics.
He was simply trying to find a way to make the farm financially sustainable.
“We weren’t making any money on the land,” Kominek said. “My family was losing money on it every year.”
The property, known today as Jack’s Solar Garden, has been in Kominek’s family since 1972, when his grandfather purchased the land. For decades, the farm produced hay, but by the time Kominek returned in 2016, the economics no longer made sense.
Property taxes, water rights and utility costs quickly consumed any revenue generated from the land.
“Any money that we would get off of haying would immediately go out the door to cover those expenses,” Kominek said. “Nothing to go to the grocery store on.”
Looking for alternatives, Kominek explored several ideas before landing on one that initially raised concerns within his own family: solar energy.
His mother wanted to preserve the agricultural character of the property and maintain the views she had enjoyed for years. After learning more about agrivoltaics — the practice of combining agriculture and solar energy production on the same land — she became more receptive to the idea.
“It was once we got the combination of the things together that it seemed like it made more sense for the family,” Kominek said.
In 2020, the family transformed an eight-acre hay field into a solar array containing more than 3,200 panels. Rather than ending agricultural production, the project became a living laboratory where researchers and farmers could explore how crops, livestock and solar infrastructure might work together.
Today, Jack’s Solar Garden serves as both a working solar facility and a research site in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Colorado State University and the University of Arizona.
One of the biggest lessons learned from the project challenges a common assumption about farming in Colorado.
“We are a water-limited state, we’re not a light-limited state,” Kominek said.
The partial shade created by solar panels helps reduce evaporation and retain soil moisture, something Kominek first noticed before construction began. He observed that grass growing on the east side of an elm tree consistently outperformed grass growing in full sunlight.
That same principle has shown up in research conducted beneath the solar panels.
Leafy greens such as lettuce, spinach, arugula, kale and chard have performed especially well under the panels, in some cases producing two to five times more growth than identical crops planted outside the array.
“I was surprised at how beneficial it was for especially herbaceous leafy green plants,” Kominek said. “All those plants were doing really well in the solar array, between two to five times better, depending on the rainy season and the varietal that was put into the ground.”
Researchers have found that plants grown beneath the panels often produce more above-ground biomass because reduced heat stress allows them to devote more energy to growth.
As solar development continues across Colorado, Kominek sees agrivoltaics as a way to reduce conflict between agricultural communities and renewable energy developers.
“I think they definitely can stabilize each other,” he said when asked whether solar development and agriculture are on a collision course. “It just depends on the personalities and policies in place. If you have people willing to work together, then you got an opportunity for doing it together.”
That cooperation, he believes, requires flexibility from both sides as well as policies that encourage collaboration rather than competition.
For Kominek, however, the most rewarding part of the work is not the research or the solar production.
It’s watching people see the concept in person for the first time.
Thousands of visitors tour Jack’s Solar Garden each year, many arriving with questions about whether agriculture and solar can truly coexist.
“It helps inspire me to see other people be inspired by what we’re doing here,” Kominek said.
Nearly a decade after returning to his family’s farm, Kominek believes the project demonstrates that rural communities do not necessarily have to choose between agriculture and renewable energy.
Instead, he sees an opportunity to preserve working lands while creating new sources of income and resilience for future generations.
“I enjoy being able to get people to see that there’s other possibilities,” Kominek said. “It takes every individual to think about it themselves, and then choose to make a change.”
What began as an effort to save a family farm has become a model for how agriculture and renewable energy can coexist. As Colorado communities continue to debate the future of rural land use, Kominek hopes the lessons learned at Jack’s Solar Garden will help show that solar development and agriculture do not have to compete for the same ground.
Three cows graze beneath solar panels at Jack’s Solar Garden in Longmont, one of the nation’s leading agrivoltaic research sites. The project explores how livestock, crop production and renewable energy generation can coexist on the same agricultural land. COURTESY PHOTO – Colorado AGRIVOLTAIC LEARNING CENTER
