Under a clear, sunny sky in Ames, the chirps of crickets and chorus of cicadas create a soft background for the mechanical creaking of solar panels and whirring of inverter boxes.
"It's no different than your computer at home when you're plugging away on Facebook and the fan starts going there," said Nick Peterson, the strategic partnerships manager at Alliant Energy. "But as you can hear, the birds sometimes are enjoying the man-made forest that we've created for them here."
This past summer at the Alliant Energy Solar Farm at Iowa State University, professors and students worked under the din of wildlife and technology to tend to vegetables, fruits, and boxes of beehives.
The project is part of a U.S. Department of Energy-funded study on agrivoltaics, or the practice of using land under and around solar panels for agricultural purposes, such as cultivating pollinator gardens, growing food crops, and grazing livestock.
Read more at Iowa Public Radio.