Index — Alphabetical
Every defined or coined term in the lexicon, ordered A–Z. This is the alphabetical view of the Terminology chapter (§8 Terminology), which holds the same set grouped by subject. Use this one when you know the word, that one when you want the neighborhood it belongs to.
Each entry gives a short gloss and two links: §8 Terminology for the definition, and, where a chapter develops the term, the section that does so. The built-in site search (top of every page) complements both, since search finds a word anywhere in the prose, while this list is the curated set of terms the document actually defines.
Zone codes A0–A5 are grouped under A; farming axis positions S1–S5 under S.
A
A0 — Rooftop — arrays on buildings, and by extension carports and canopies, which take no ground at all: no siting latitude, no ground layer, and no farming axis position; the transect’s origin rather than a point on it — Terminology · The Zones
A1 — Farmstead — <100 kW, behind-the-meter, single owner-operator, existing farm labor — Terminology · The Zones
A2 — Commercial — 100 kW–1 MW, behind-meter to distribution, landowner with possibly one lease counterparty — Terminology · The Zones
A3 — Community — 1–5 MW, distribution / community solar, multi-party, purpose-built ground management — Terminology · The Zones
A4 — Utility — 5–50 MW, developer-led institutional capital, contract-enterprise management — Terminology · The Zones
A5 — Complex — 50 MW+, transmission, utility/IPP, contract enterprise at ranch scale — Terminology · The Zones
Agricultural production — design pressure: keep working land working — Terminology · The pressures
Agriculture and soils function — restorative function: what the array does for farming, on its ground and the fields around it, via pollination, pest regulation, forage and shelter, and the lease that keeps the operation running; not the farming axis restated — Terminology · Agriculture and soils
Agrisolar — agroenergy specific to photovoltaics; the lexicon’s working umbrella (after NCAT’s AgriSolar Clearinghouse usage), broadened to be neutral across the farming axis — Terminology
Agrivoltaics — crop or livestock production within the array footprint (S1–S2); cf. agrophotovoltaics, photovoltaic agriculture — Terminology
Agroenergy — energy infrastructure designed to interact intentionally with agricultural or ecological land function; umbrella term — Terminology
Archetype — a way the design pressures have been resolved at a particular scale zone and sharing position — Terminology · Archetypal Forms
B
Bare conversion — ordinary ground converted with the farm operation ended: the same ground fact as S3 without the restorative one. The non-restorative baseline the axis is read against, not a position on it — Terminology · The positions
Benefit delivery — which route a function’s benefit takes to whoever receives it: in place, along a connection (water, living things, or institutions), or by preservation; the route, not the distance, decides who can check the claim — Terminology · Where benefits are delivered
C
Carrying capacity — season-long forage the land sustains over time; a grazing design variable — Terminology · Worked example: grazing
Coexistence — retired as a position name; see S3 — Ordinary-land siting, the center of the farming axis, neither sharing nor sparing — Terminology · The positions
Co-benefit — the field’s usual word for a restorative function; recorded but not adopted, because its grammar demotes what it names to something arriving alongside the real objective — Terminology
Co-location — panels and a land use share a parcel without functional interdependence; cf. integration — Terminology
Community & economic function — the socioeconomic restorative function: durable local income, livability, and whether the burdens and the benefits land on the same people, built for the host community; the outcomes footprint’s Communities domain read as an outcome, distinct from the social-license pressure and community-benefit lever — Terminology · Community and economy
Community acceptance and benefit — design pressure: secure and sustain community acceptance and community benefit — two forces that can come apart, held in one pressure — Terminology · The pressures
Community Benefit — instruments returning value to the host community (CBA/HCA, PILOT, good-neighbor payments, community-solar subscription, co-ownership, decommissioning bond); distinct from acceptance — Terminology
Connectivity — whether organisms can move into, through, and out of a site; designed at four scales, from fencing and mown strips to whether a regional fleet falls within dispersal distance — Terminology · Ecology
Contract grazing — grazing delivered as a contracted vegetation-management service by a party who does not live on site — Terminology · Worked example: grazing
Contract-led — restoration mode: the work is done in the lease, the ordinance, or the benefit agreement rather than anywhere on the site; the mode the community and economic function runs on — Terminology · Community and economy
Cost and financing — design pressure: minimize what the project costs to build and what it costs to finance — Terminology · The pressures ## D {.unnumbered}
Decommissioning / Repowering / Reversibility — end-of-life questions: removing and restoring, replacing modules, and how completely the prior land use can return — Terminology
Delivery by preservation — the mode in which nothing moves and the benefit is ground nearby that stayed as it was; proximate, because development pressure is local, but counterfactual rather than observed — Terminology · Where benefits are delivered
Design import — the characteristic regional failure: carrying a resolution from the region where it was demonstrated into one whose factors differ; grid and market demands is the usual vehicle — Terminology · What follows
Design levers — the six kinds of decision a project can make, and the only things anyone can change: scale, siting, structure, management, ownership, contracts — Terminology · Design Levers
Design pressures — the competing forces every site must resolve; unlike axes they have direction, conflict, and advocates — Terminology · Design Pressures
Design tension — what a resolution of the design pressures leaves unresolved; never nil, so the question is how much remains and who carries it, and the settings that leave least are the ones that recur — Terminology · Where the pressures collide
Diffuse fraction — the share of irradiance arriving as diffuse rather than direct-beam light; higher under cloud, non-directional, and most of what a ground layer lives on — Terminology · Six factors
Dual Use — production-based criterion: active agricultural production in the footprint across the project life (AFT’s definition); S1–S2 — Terminology
E
Ecological function — restorative function: what can live on the ground and what can move through it; habitat from the ground layer up, plus connectivity — Terminology · Ecology
Ecovoltaics — solar development incorporating ecological understanding into array design and management, co-prioritizing ecosystem function with generation; its ecological ground layer is a restorative function rather than an axis position, most often built at S3 — Terminology
End-of-life responsibility — a design pressure: minimize the residual footprint and preserve the option to return the ground to its prior use — Terminology · The pressures
Energy yield — design pressure: maximize energy per unit land — Terminology · The pressures
F
Feasible wedge — the feasible region across scale and sharing: the sharing edge runs flat across the whole transect, the sparing edge opens with scale, and only S4 thins toward A5 — Terminology · Which positions scale allows
Footprint — land physically occupied by racking, panels, and access infrastructure; paired with influence zone — Terminology
G
Grid and market demands — design pressure: satisfy the criteria of whoever buys the power, attributes, or tax position — Terminology · The pressures
Ground Coverage Ratio (GCR) — ratio of module area to ground area; the array’s density; the number behind the row-geometry ↔︎ ground-layer coupling — Terminology
Ground Layer — whatever occupies the surface beneath and between panels; primary carrier of restorative function; syn. understory, ground cover — Terminology
H
Hydrologic function — restorative function: water quantity (infiltration, recharge, soil moisture, and at scale consumptive use retired from a basin’s budget) and water quality by two routes needing opposite ground, avoided loading on the ground that leaches and interception on the flow path below it — Terminology · Water
I
Influence Zone — the larger, typically asymmetric area whose hydrology, microclimate, soil, or wildlife movement is measurably affected — Terminology
Integration — functional interdependence — panel height set by livestock clearance, spacing by forage light, tracking by photosynthetic timing — Terminology
L
Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) — standard dual-use productivity metric; handles the non-production ground layers of S3–S5 poorly — Terminology
Land sharing — production continues on the ground the array occupies; the sharing wing of the axis (S1–S2). Borrowed from conservation ecology — Terminology · The Farming Axis
Land sparing — ground comes out of production so other ground can be left alone; the sparing wing of the axis (S4–S5). Borrowed from conservation ecology — Terminology · The Farming Axis
M
Management-led — restoration mode: placement is a given; ground cover, grazing regime, and operational schedule carry everything — Terminology · The five modes
Marginal / Previously Disturbed Land — the low-value ground that low-productivity siting (S4) presupposes: low-yielding cropland, reclaimed mine land, landfills, brownfields (“brightfields”) — Terminology
Module Technology — the panel as a lever: monofacial/bifacial, vertical bifacial, semitransparent, spectrally selective — Terminology
Multi-use solar — the field’s competing umbrella (Merheb et al. 2025), covering agrivoltaics, rangevoltaics, and ecovoltaics; narrower than agrisolar as used here, which also covers S3–S5 — Terminology
O
Operations and maintenance — design pressure: minimize management burden across a 25–40 year asset life — Terminology · The pressures
Overhead and interspace systems — the engineering standards’ hardware typology (DIN SPEC 91434; NREL/InSPIRE): modules above the working surface, or low with the crop between rows; classifies structure, where an archetype classifies the resolution of pressures — Terminology · Archetypal Forms
Ownership-led — restoration mode: the work is done by who holds the asset, with no agreement needed because the parties were never opposed; strongest at A1–A2 and unavailable once the owner is absentee — Terminology · The five modes
P
Policy and permission — design pressure: satisfy the rules that decide whether the project happens at all, and the subsidies that decide what pays; the one pressure whose direction the jurisdiction sets — Terminology · The pressures
Pore Space — the three-dimensional volume between modules and between modules and ground; frames clearance as habitat and working space — Terminology
R
Rangevoltaics — grazing under and between the panels, S1 on ground that was already pasture and S2 on former cropland; the field’s ecological-literature name for solar grazing, workable with sheep but not with goats, cattle, or horses; syn. solar grazing — Terminology · Worked example: grazing
Regional calibration — a restatement of the lexicon’s indicative values for a particular region: capacity bands, absent zones, the binding constraint, the positions realistically open — Terminology · A worked calibration
Regional factors — the six spatial factors a region is read by: resource, grid operator, aridity, latitude, cropping system, irrigation — Terminology · Six factors
Regionality — the claim that the design pressures resolve differently in different places, because the factors that weight them vary across space; the vocabulary is constant, the weights are not — Terminology · The same pressures, weighted by place
Restoration mode — which design lever carried the restorative work — Siting-led, Structure-led, Management-led, Ownership-led, or Contract-led — Terminology · The five modes
Restorative — the frame of the whole lexicon: ground-layer function as a design objective co-equal with generation — Terminology
Restorative goals — design pressure: make ecological, hydrological, and economic resilience co-equal with generation — Terminology · The pressures
Restorative function — a restorative capacity a project can be designed to deliver, reachable across many structural positions; two biophysical (water, ecology) plus one agricultural (agriculture and soils) and one socioeconomic (community and economy) — Terminology · Restorative Functions
S
S0 — Created agriculture — a farm takes something off ground that carried no agricultural use before the array; the one position that records a use beginning rather than one displaced — Terminology · The positions
S1 — Primary agriculture — the agricultural use continues essentially as it was, with the array added over or between it — Terminology · The positions
S2 — Secondary agriculture — a farm still works the ground, at a lower value than it carried before; grazing on former cropland, forage, hay, hives — Terminology · The positions
S3 — Ordinary-land siting — neither sharing nor sparing: the array takes ordinary ground outright and the revenue sustains the farm enterprise holding it, so the restoration is socioeconomic rather than biophysical; the center of the axis — Terminology · The positions
S4 — Low-productivity siting — the array takes ground already idle, marginal, or chronically low-yielding, so nothing in production was displaced to build it; arrays on buildings take no ground and hold no position (A0) — Terminology · The positions
S5 — Impaired-land siting — the array takes ground that carried a measurable off-site burden (low yields, high runoff, nutrient export, irrigation draw beyond the aquifer’s budget), or that sits where such a burden can be intercepted — Terminology · The positions
outcomes footprint — a whole-project reading across four domains (Communities, Agriculture, Water, Ecology), each running from causing harm at the center, through avoiding harm, out to promoting benefit at the rim; the ring is a zero point, not a pass mark — Terminology · The outcomes footprint
Scale Transect — a single gradient from farmstead to complex that most other terms are read against; defined by covarying bundles, not capacity — Terminology · The Scale Transect
Screening — management of the array’s outward visual presence (setbacks, buffers, berms, fencing, glint/glare); acts on the visual portion of the influence zone; dual-function — Terminology
Setback — the ground held open between the array and the property line, road, or dwelling; the dimension local ordinances fix most often, and where screening gets planted — Terminology
Siting Axis — retired as the axis name; see Farming Axis — Terminology · The Farming Axis
Farming Axis — the scale-orthogonal dimension: whether the array shares land with production (land sharing), spares land by taking ground out of it (land sparing), or neither; five positions centered on S3 — Terminology · The Farming Axis
Siting latitude — the designer’s freedom over where the array goes; peaks at A2–A3, bounded by the parcel at A1 and by the land market and grid topology at A5 — Terminology · Scale constrains design leverage
Siting-led — restoration mode: the restorative work is done by the choice of ground; requires A2–A3 latitude — Terminology · The five modes
Solar grazing — see Rangevoltaics — Terminology
Stocking density — instantaneous animals per unit area at a moment; diverges from carrying capacity — Terminology · Worked example: grazing
Structure-led — restoration mode: array geometry is the instrument — clearance, row spacing, module transmissivity — Terminology · The five modes
T
Tracking Schedule & Curtailment — operational-regime levers: how the array is steered through the day, and deliberate output reduction — Terminology
V
Viewshed — the ground from which the array can be seen; the part of the influence zone that reaches people rather than water, soil, or wildlife, and what screening acts on — Terminology