Virginia agrivoltaics law house bill 508 defines a new legal category
Virginia agrivoltaics law house bill 508 gives the practice of farming under and around solar panels a legal definition for the first time, instead of leaving each local zoning board to decide case by case whether a proposed project still counts as a working farm. Governor Abigail Spanberger signed House Bill 508 and its identical companion, Senate Bill 340, on June 17, 2026, and both take effect July 1, 2026. Agrivoltaics, the intentional co location of farming and solar power generation on the same land, now has a 6 part legal test that a solar project has to pass to use that name.
What the six part definition requires, and the second law beside it
To count as agrivoltaics under the new law, a project has to prioritize and sustain farm output while adding solar power, keep marketable farm goods being grown and sold for the entire life of the solar array, operate as part of a real farm business rather than a side project, include decommissioning rules that protect long term soil health once the panels eventually come down, avoid significantly displacing farming activity, and leave farmers room to adapt to changing markets. A solar plant of 150 megawatts or less has to meet that displacement rule directly, avoiding significant harm to farming, to qualify as agrivoltaics.
A related law, House Bill 711, also takes effect July 1, 2026, and lets local governments give agrivoltaic projects flexibility from standard solar panel height limits, specifically so farming activity underneath or nearby can continue. Jared Burden, a partner at the Virginia energy law firm GreeneHurlocker, states in his own review of both laws that grazing animals present on a solar site does not automatically qualify as agrivoltaics. The agricultural use still has to be real, ongoing, and commercially meaningful under the 6 part test above.
GreeneHurlocker own legal review lists all 6 conditions the statutory definition requires and separately discusses House Bill 508 and House Bill 711 as the 2 Virginia laws on solar siting that took effect July 1, 2026.
Show the numbers
| Conditions the statutory definition requires a project to meet | 6 |
| New Virginia laws on solar siting effective July 1, 2026 | 2 |
This law is one of a dozen signed this session
House Bill 508 was not an isolated bill. The Piedmont Environmental Council backed 12 energy bills that Virginia signed into law this legislative session, and this is 1 of them. Scott Sink, president of the Virginia Farm Bureau, spoke at the signing alongside the governor, 2 legislators, and 2 state officials.
This is a prime example of when different ideas come together.
Scott Sink, president of the Virginia Farm Bureau. Source 3.
Power Wattz Solar reports the Piedmont Environmental Council backed 12 energy bills that Virginia signed into law this legislative session, and states House Bill 508 is 1 of them.
Show the numbers
| House Bill 508, this agrivoltaics law | 1 |
| Total energy bills the council backed this session | 12 |
The scale one advisor says is within reach
Virginia has 39,000 farms. Ashish Kapoor, senior energy and climate advisor at the Piedmont Environmental Council, told the signing crowd that if 10% of those farms each installed a 1 megawatt agrivoltaics project on a few acres, the combined output would equal 4 nuclear power plants, his own estimate, not an independently verified count.
What the shared definition does not settle
Governor Spanberger signed both bills at the Piedmont Environmental Council Community Farm at Roundabout Meadows in Aldie, the first crop based agrivoltaics project in Virginia, and the council states its demonstration farm has not paid an electric bill this year. The new definition gives farmers and local zoning boards a shared test to check a proposed project against, but the same law firm review that raised the grazing question also states solar siting questions are still being worked out case by case, even with the definition now in place.