Kudos to Professor Andrea Gerlak and social science team

Major kudos to Professor Andrea Gerlak for creating and sustaining such a great social science
team working on our agrivoltaics projects the last few years. Andrea has instilled a remarkable
level of professionalism, drive, and openness among the grad student (Tyler Swanson) and
postdoc (Carrie Seay-Fleming) communities. She and her team have a new publication entitled
“Cultivating engagement: Public participation in agrivoltaics planning and design“, Energy
Research & Social Science 127 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2025.104273. The paper
describes work done around convening a range of local stakeholders including farmers, solar
developers, government officials, food advocates, community leaders, and researchers, within a
workshop that provided Arizona-specific information on agrivoltaics and gathered participant’s
opinions of and preferences for agrivoltaic systems through both individual surveys and group
activities. The workshop participants identified a preference for small, farmer-owned agrivoltaic
systems that provide food access and educational opportunities for host communities. The
work ends with a recommendation that researchers adopt robust community engagement
practices for agrivoltaics in their own communities, and gather information on community
expectations surrounding the design, ownership, and benefits of agrivoltaic systems. Plus, they
reportedly had a pretty amazing agrivoltaics farm-to-table dinner afterwards.