Wake up Sheeple.
You can graze Cattle under solar panels now, too.
Silicon Ranch, which owns the 40-acre farm in Christiana, outside of Nashville, believes cattle-grazing is the next frontier in so-called agrivoltaics, which mostly has involved growing crops or grazing sheep beneath the panels.
The solar company debuted the project this week and will spend the next year working to demonstrate to farmers that much larger cattle also can thrive at solar sites. If successful, advocates say, that could jump-start new projects to meet the soaring electricity demand driven by rapidly expanding data centers — without contributing climate-warming carbon emissions — and help cattle producers hold onto their land and livelihoods.
“Solar is one of the most powerful tools we have for cutting emissions and … is cost-competitive with fossil fuels,” said Taylor Bacon, a doctoral student at Colorado State University who has studied ecological outcomes at solar grazing sites. “I think we’re starting to see enough research that, when you do it well, the land use can be more of an opportunity than a downside.”
Though there are far more cattle than sheep in the U.S., their size poses challenges at solar sites, where both expensive equipment and the animals, which can weigh more than half a ton, must be protected.
Solar panels often pivot to near-vertical angles to capture the sun’s rays, leaving little room underneath for cattle; simply raising the panels is cost-prohibitive because of the amount of steel required. So Silicon Ranch raised the panels a little but also developed software that workers activate to turn the panels close to horizontal when cattle are grazing, giving them room to wander, said Nick de Vries, the company’s chief technology officer.
Workers rotate the cattle — currently 10 cows and their calves — between paddocks every few days so panels on the ungrazed portion of the site operate normally, generating a supply of roughly 5 megawatts of electricity for Middle Tennessee Electric, a rural electric co-op.
The hope is that the technology eventually will be adopted more broadly, company officials said.
“We know it works,” said de Vries. “But you need to prove it to other people.”
For solar companies, agricultural land is generally easier to develop than other types of sites. But many farmers — and communities — will need to be convinced that solar grazing will benefit them because of past practices that destroyed topsoil and took land out of production permanently.
“For many agricultural stakeholders, it is offensive to see high-quality farmland getting graded and piled when that’s a farm family’s legacy,” said Ethan Winter, national smart solar director at American Farmland Trust.
But he sees potential for solar grazing partnerships to help farmers keep their land in production and earn extra income at a time when it’s increasingly difficult to earn money farming and ranching alone.
“Agriculture is in a really tough spot right now” including because of trade wars, climate extremes, increased costs and pressure to sell, Winter said. “So maybe this is our moment where we can be helping states meet their energy needs and do that in a way that’s providing new opportunities for farmers.”
One lesson learned is that cattle ranching is an important part of our nation’s agricultural identity and heritage, as well as its economy. There are eight times more cattle ranches than sheep ranches in the U.S. and 17 times more cattle than sheep. At the same time, cattle can move and graze a lot of land. By co-locating cattle ranching and solar energy production, we can help provide a boost for existing and aspiring cattle ranchers similar to the one we are providing to the growing community of shepherds in rural communities across the country.
In short, regenerative cattle grazing on solar farms—that is good for solar generation, good for the land, and good for the animal—can provide elevated benefits—environmental, economic, and social—while supporting a significant facet of U.S. culture and historical land use.