Energy Farm is developing integrated agrivoltaic solar and green hydrogen infrastructure on working agricultural land in Imperial Valley, California, one of the highest solar resource regions in North America.
Learn MoreEnergy Farm Calipatria proposes to combine three mutually reinforcing technologies on a single site: agrivoltaic solar, green hydrogen production, and water reuse. Each element strengthens the others.
Solar arrays elevated to allow continued farming beneath and between the panels. The working citrus operation, lemons and Minneola tangelos, continues in full production throughout the life of the project. Agrivoltaic design preserves the agricultural value of the land while generating utility-scale clean power. Energy Farm is targeting a site among fewer than 35 commercial-scale agrivoltaic projects in the United States to involve active crop production.
A modular PEM electrolyzer facility powered entirely by on-site solar generation. No grid draw. No fossil fuel input. The hydrogen is produced using reclaimed water as feedstock, creating a circular resource pathway that reduces pressure on regional freshwater supplies. Production is intended to serve industrial offtake markets in Southern California, supporting the state's heavy transportation and industrial decarbonization goals.
The full platform is designed to operate entirely behind the meter at scale. No CAISO interconnection or utility power purchase agreement is required for the primary hydrogen production system. During the development phase, a pilot solar array will deliver clean energy to the IID grid under a Net Billing agreement, serving as a proof-of-concept for the broader platform.
Hydrogen production feedwater is sourced from reclaimed water rather than freshwater. This approach reduces project dependency on increasingly constrained regional water supplies, creates a productive use for water that might otherwise be discharged, and supports long-term water sustainability in one of California's most agriculturally productive regions.
Imperial Valley, California offers a rare combination of exceptional solar resource, established agricultural infrastructure, available water reuse capacity, and a utility committed to renewable energy integration. It is one of the most compelling locations in North America for integrated agrivoltaic and green hydrogen development.
David Platt started Energy Farm in 2006 with a conviction that clean energy infrastructure could be built at scale on land that was already productive. He spent the next two decades building the expertise to make that happen.
His career in enterprise infrastructure gave him a ground-level understanding of how complex projects actually get built. He began as a fiber engineer designing large-scale fiber infrastructure, then grew into a role that added cost estimating and budget creation to the design work. Along the way he founded and operated a free public wifi network in Philadelphia, coordinating with local community groups and securing grant funding to build and expand the network.