☀️🌱 Solar & Farm Engineering: Designing Shared Land Solutions

In this hands-on engineering unit, students become sustainability engineers and problem solvers, challenged to design, test, and improve a farm system that can produce food and generate solar energy at the same time. Working in collaborative design teams, students move through the full engineering design process — from defining a real-world land-use problem to testing, redesigning, and communicating a final solution.

Students investigate how solar panels and farms can share space, exploring how sunlight, shade, water, and space affect plants, animals, and people. By examining real-world examples of farms that use solar panels alongside crops or livestock, students learn how engineers balance energy production, food systems, and environmental needs. Along the way, students test materials, analyze design constraints, and use evidence to guide their decisions. Failure is treated as a valuable part of the learning process, with students encouraged to revise and improve their designs through iteration.

The unit culminates in a Solar & Farm Engineering Challenge, where teams present their integrated farm designs, explain how their system supports both agriculture and renewable energy, and defend their engineering choices using data and real-world sustainability connections.

Student Challenges Include:

📌 Defining and delimiting a land-use engineering problem
📌 Investigating how sunlight, shade, and space affect plants and animals
📌 Analyzing real-world examples of solar panels on farms
📌 Designing a shared system that supports food production and clean energy
📌 Testing and revising designs based on constraints and evidence
📌 Redesigning solutions to improve plant growth, animal safety, or energy use
📌 Communicating engineering ideas through sketches, models, and explanations
📌 Demonstrating collaboration, systems thinking, and perseverance

Final Products May Include:

A student engineering notebook or planning packet

Design sketches and labeled system diagrams

A physical or visual model of a solar-powered farm

Test results or observations showing how the design works

A final presentation or Solar & Farm Engineering Challenge showcase

Learning Areas:

Engineering & Design • Earth & Environmental Science • Energy Systems • Sustainability • Problem Solving • Communication Skills • Collaboration & Systems Thinking