The sun can either be a valuable tool or a challenge for farms. Between May and June of 2022, researchers from São Paulo State University ran a 60-day field trial in Brazil, comparing 52 crossbred lambs that got shade from overhead solar panels against lambs that didn't. The results were only written up years later, in a paper titled "Animal agrivoltaics facilitates the sustainable intensification of sheep production in tropical areas," published in the journal Small Ruminant Research.
The logic behind this experiment seemed fairly straightforward: if solar panels had to be under the sun, then why couldn’t the sheep stand under the solar panel? As for the outcome, the lambs that received shade had body temperatures about 0.7°C lower and roughly 4% better feed efficiency than the unshaded lambs on the hot days.
