The American-Made Large Animal and Solar System Operations (LASSO) Prize

The American-Made Large Animal and Solar System Operations (LASSO) Prize offers more than $8 million in cash prizes to multi-stakeholder teams that develop impactful projects to deepen our understanding of the co-location of solar photovoltaics (PV) and cattle grazing operations (cattle agrivoltaics).

The LASSO Prize is designed to bring solar developers, farmers, ranchers, and other stakeholders together to form teams; build pilot sites; identify best practices, use cases, costs, applicable business models, and associated energy and agricultural outcomes; host field days; and more!

Prize Overview
Agrivoltaics, the co-location of solar PV and agriculture, is a growing industry that shows promising benefits for both agricultural production and solar energy development.

Cattle agrivoltaics has the potential to reduce land use conflict, preserve agricultural land, increase landowner and farmer/rancher revenues, and may also benefit animal welfare and plant and soil health while easing some of the barriers to solar energy deployment.

This innovative practice is relatively new in the United States, and more pilot and pilot site projects are needed to de-risk designs and business models to prove that cattle agrivoltaics can yield agricultural and economic opportunities.

The LASSO Prize, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office, will support pilot and pilot sites projects designed to gather and share information about costs, business models, and energy and agricultural outcomes associated with cattle agrivoltaics. The prize also aims to support relationship-building between the solar energy and agricultural communities and generate best practices that will help expand the industry.

Interested competitors are encouraged to create multi-stakeholder teams and compete in one of two available tracks: Standard Track and Operating Projects Track. Phase 1 submissions for both tracks are due March 6, 2025, at 5 p.m. ET.

Standard Track
The Standard Track is open to new cattle agrivoltaics projects. Through the three phases (Phase 2 consists of two subphases), this track focuses on teaming, system and grazing plan design, construction, implementation, and multi-year data collection.

Standard Track
The Standard Track is open to new cattle agrivoltaics projects. Through the three phases (Phase 2 consists of two subphases), this track focuses on teaming, system and grazing plan design, construction, implementation, and multi-year data collection.

Bonus Prizes
The LASSO Prize offers two bonus prizes: the Largest PV System Bonus Prize and the Data Bounty Bonus Prize.

The Largest PV System Bonus Prize is awarded to the team with the largest operational cattle agrivoltaics system in which cattle interact with a DC-rated PV capacity over 5 MW-dc, considering only teams from the Standard Track with eligible Standard Track Phase 2B submissions.

The Data Bounty Bonus Prize is awarded to the team that submits the most valuable datasets from cattle agrivoltaics projects that go above and beyond minimum requirements. Submissions from both Standard Track Phase 3 and Operating Projects Track Phase 2 are eligible for this bonus prize.

Who Is Eligible to Compete
The prize is open to U.S.-based individuals and organizations, including solar developers, ranchers, and farmers. Teams are encouraged to include members who are hardware and software manufacturers, local governments, utilities, commodity organizations, historically underserved producers, researchers, extension programs, and universities with expertise in cattle research and agrivoltaics. See the Official Rules for eligibility criteria.

NOTE: For this prize, cattle agrivoltaics entails the co-location of solar PV arrays and cattle grazing. It does not include rooftop PV systems, projects without interaction between the cattle and the PV array, or projects with any livestock other than cattle.