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... Traditionally, solar panel farms are quiet -- save for the faint hum of the inverter. But on about one in 10 of American solar farms, there's a new sound reverberating through fields: baaaa.

Letting sheep roam under solar panels is just one of many forms of a burgeoning strategy called agrivoltaics, where crops grow or livestock graze in tandem with renewable energy infrastructure.

It's not only of potential benefit for the animals, which get additional shade. The panels can also protect crops from the elements as well as divert water to them, creating cooler, damper conditions that even boost yields.

And even the solar panels themselves tend to respond well to this co-existence -- as the cooler they are, the more electricity they produce per watt of sunlight.

"Having concrete or something underneath the solar panels -- you're going to have lower efficiency than having something like plants that are transpiring and cooling off on the land surface," Carl Bernacchi, professor of plant biology and crop sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told DW.

While the potential is enormous, especially as climate change puts more and more heat stress on agriculture, the practice is still in its infancy. In Europe, if agrivoltaics were implemented on just 1% of available agricultural land, the continent could exceed its solar energy targets for 2030. ...