Project Evaluating the Economic and Land-Use Tradeoffs of Agrivoltaics in Indiana Program DUIRI - Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship Term Fall 2026 Status Accepted Research Area Agricultural Economics Description The rapid expansion of utility-scale solar development is increasing competition for agricultural land. Agrivoltaics has emerged as a potential solution by combining agricultural production and solar energy generation on the same land base. However, it remains unclear which agrivoltaic configurations can preserve meaningful agricultural activity while remaining economically attractive relative to conventional solar development. This interdisciplinary project brings together expertise in agricultural economics, agronomy, and engineering to examine the economic and land-use tradeoffs associated with agrivoltaic systems in Indiana. The project will foster collaboration among three faculty members with complementary expertise in agricultural systems, energy technologies, and economic analysis, allowing the student to work at the intersection of multiple disciplines. The semester-long project will focus on evaluating a small set of representative agrivoltaic configurations using existing data and published information. The student will collect and synthesize information on agricultural productivity, solar generation, and economic returns associated with selected agrivoltaic systems and compare their performance with conventional agricultural production and utility-scale solar development. The project will pursue three objectives: 1. Quantify the economic incentive for farmland conversion to solar by comparing the returns to conventional agriculture, utility-scale solar leases, and selected agrivoltaic configurations. 2. Evaluate the productivity of alternative agrivoltaic systems using measures such as the Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) and other indicators of joint food and energy production. 3. Identify agrivoltaic configurations that best balance agricultural output and solar profitability under Indiana conditions, with particular attention to the effects of land-use regulations and agricultural preservation policies. Supervisor Juan P Sesmero Mentor Type of work required The student's primary responsibilities will include compiling data from the agrivoltaics literature, conducting comparative analyses of alternative configurations, and assisting in the development of economic and land-use assessments. Websites Qualifications The student should have basic statistical and coding skills--sufficient to be able to store and clean data and calculate descriptive statistics (such as mean, standard deviation, etc.) and generate figures and tables. Credit Hours 0 Weekly Hours 10 (estimated)