Agrivoltaic Company Okovate Acquires Stanford University & Carnegie Mellon Tech Startup - CleanTechnica

Okovate Sustainable Energy, a Washington, DC-based agrivoltaic company, has acquired Fundusol, a startup that commercialized a modeling platform developed at Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University. This platform uses sophisticated data-driven technology to optimize the co-location of solar power installations and agricultural activities. Supported by The Schmidt Family Foundation, Okovate plans to integrate Fundusol’s proprietary modeling engine into its development process, enabling precise simulation of interactions between solar array designs and crop growth patterns. This acquisition positions Okovate as a technical data partner for farmers, moving beyond traditional solar project development toward enhanced precision and efficiency. The technology behind Fundusol’s platform combines the SIMulated PLant Ecosystem (SIMPLE) crop biomass model with proprietary irradiance and thermal dynamics models to project outcomes for over 60 crop types. Key features include genomic optimization using custom genetic algorithms to tailor solar panel configurations to crop light requirements, precision phenology insights to predict crop responses to microclimates created by solar