Industry News
For generations, snow fences have been a simple but important line of defence in the Upper Midwest’s endless battle with winter. According to traffic data collected by UsDOT, each year more than 1,300 people are killed in car crashes in the snow and more than 116,800 people are injured. Rows of wood, plastic, or even standing corn stalks have long stood guard along Minnesota highways, slowing howling winds and forcing drifting snow to pile up before it reaches the road. However, during the summer months these fences serve no purpose. That was until last year. Along U.S. Highway 10 east of Moorhead, researchers have been testing a version unlike any other in the country: a snow fence that doubles as a solar array able to provide renewable energy to farmers and residents.
“This is our solar snow fence,” Mijia Yang, Associate Professor and Principal Investigator at the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at North Dakota State University who has led the project in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Transportation explained to MPR News when the fence was first installed. “It looks and acts like a fence—but it also generates power.”
The 100-foot-long installation in Glyndon, Minnesota, completed in winter 2022-23, was built from 112 solar panels arranged with gaps so wind and snow behave as if passing through a traditional fence. Over the past two winters, Yang’s team has measured its performance, and in May 2025, they presented their findings in a report to the Minnesota Department of Transportation: The fence not only corralled blowing snow effectively, it generated enough energy to power a medium-sized home—while also offering the ability to melt snow directly. In the second winter, the solar snow fence was upgraded into an active snow fence system through snow melting with the electricity generated by means of heat pads, which enhanced the solar snow fence storage capacity tremendously (near infinity).
That dual function could have sweeping implications for both road safety and winter maintenance budgets. Minnesota spends tens of millions annually on plowing and de-icing highways. A self-sustaining system that helps prevent drifts while also reducing the need for salt or heavy equipment could be transformative. “The benefits you get is the energy generated and also the snow and ice removal operations you reduced,” Yang explained.
The findings surprised even seasoned transportation officials. “They’re producing enough energy with this 100-foot section to meet the home energy needs for a typical household,” Dan Gullickson, MnDOT’s blowing snow control supervisor, told MPR News. “And that was pretty eye-opening. If you did this across a mile, that would be 50 homes.”
The fence, which cost about $370,000 to design and install, was largely funded as a research project. Yang emphasized that most of that budget was for monitoring equipment, data collection, and prototypes; actual materials and construction were only a fraction of the total. So spreading the fence across the state would come at a much lower cost per foot. Based on the actual investment made in the 100-ft solar snow fence, the payback period was roughly 11 years. However, if the project was rolled out over larger areas, economies of scale would shorten the payback period to 5 years.
Snow fences are already common across Minnesota’s prairie highways, where persistent winds can move tons of snow each season. Traditional fences are passive: they slow wind, create turbulence, and cause snow to settle. By swapping wood or plastic slats for solar panels, Yang’s team has added a new layer of utility to a long-standing design. The system’s ability to melt snow is seen as a particularly valuable innovation. Panels can power embedded heating pads on nearby pavement, preventing dangerous ice patches that cause crashes. Beyond highways, Yang imagines potential applications for farms, ranches, and even homes in rural areas — providing both renewable energy and snow control in a single structure.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation is now exploring next steps. Future projects may scale up from the test site in Glyndon to longer stretches of highway, or experiment with variations in panel design and orientation, or the use of pads under the pavement. The revolutionary energy-harvesting solar snow fence system does not occupy additional land, and is easy to construct and could be quickly rolled out to other snow states.
