Empowering Vermont Farms: Thin-Film Solar Demonstration for Barn Energy

Vermont’s agricultural landscape includes an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 aging barns that are essential to farming operations but largely excluded from the clean-energy transition. These structures are typically older, lightly framed, and not engineered to support the weight of conventional crystalline-silicon solar panels. As a result, many farmers cannot safely adopt rooftop solar, despite strong interest in reducing energy costs and emissions.

These constraints create both economic and environmental inequities. At the same time, Vermont’s broader climate goals are hindered by the inability to deploy solar on a significant portion of its built agricultural infrastructure.

The result is a missed opportunity: barns represent one of Vermont’s largest untapped distributed-energy assets, yet current solar technologies are not designed to safely or practically serve them.

This project proposes a statewide demonstration of lightweight, thin-film perovskite solar technology developed by Verde Technologies, a UVM spin-out. The system enables safe solar installation on barns and rural structures that cannot support traditional panels, using modules that weigh approximately 0.23 lbs/ft² while producing up to 10 W/ft².

The project will install and evaluate three pilot systems across Vermont:

• Von Trapp Family Lodge (Stowe)

• Jake Kittel’s Barn (Morristown)

• Dhaurali Goat Farm (Colchester)

The demonstration sites can expect a 30–40% reduction in energy costs. The project will utilize UVM students and PhD candidates to develop the pilot framework of the novel perovskite technology. Creation of a replicable barn solar deployment model for Vermont will help position the state as a national leader in adapting renewable energy technologies to existing rural infrastructure.