Spanish olive oil producer Acesur has started building a 3.65 MW solar plant on stilts above an existing olive grove in Jaén, Spain, and the trees are staying put. The panels will sit high enough for tractors to pass underneath, which matters in a country where farmland and solar often compete for the same ground.
Granada-based renewable energy company Greening is developing the project, in Vilches. It will use more than 5,150 modules on metal structures over 4 meters above the ground, held up by steel pillars set in concrete. All the power will go to Acesur's nearby packaging plant, and a 3 MWh battery system will help manage when that energy is used.
What Greening says it has tested
The company describes a staged path: bioclimatic simulations first, then lab and greenhouse tests under controlled conditions, then a prototype in a traditional rain-fed olive grove. A company representative says two consecutive harvests showed solar and olives can coexist. The installation reportedly lowered soil temperatures, kept more moisture in the ground and improved yields.
Those are company claims, and the source gives no yield figures, grove size or independent review. We found no outside agricultural or engineering comment on them in the material we saw. That's the number to look for, because "improved yields" over two harvests on one prototype is a modest evidence base for an industrial rollout.
The representative also calls Vilches the world's first industrial-scale "olivovoltaic" installation. We couldn't verify that claim independently.
Public money behind it
Spain's Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE) awarded the project a €2.8 million (around US$3.2 million) grant to support bringing renewables into industrial operations. The text doesn't give the total project cost, so we can't say how much of the bill that covers.
This report is based on pv magazine's coverage, published October 20, 2026, which says work has started. It's still unclear when construction began, when it will finish or when the plant will start producing power, and none of those dates is stated in the material we saw.
For now, the setup is simple: the farm keeps farming, the factory gets its own electricity, and the battery smooths the gaps. If the harvest results hold at scale, other growers with tall trees and big energy bills will be watching. Would you trust panels over your crops?
That's wattsup, and here's wattsnext.
Sources
- 1.Elevated agrivoltaics for olive cultivation - pv magazine Global · pv magazine Global
Reported by the WattsUpNext desk from the sources linked below. Spot an error? Tell us at corrections@wattsupnext.com.
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