Solar grazing' around panels is providing a lifeline to US shepherding as clean energy expands.

[usonian]

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-solar-grazing-sheep/
https://archive.is/VGANm if Michael wants "pay to view"
Reason: grass is a fire hazard.

By Michael Hirtzer
Photography and video by Ben Brewer (and very nice!)

Nonprofit American Farmland Trust estimates the US will lose 18.4 million additional acres of agricultural land — an area nearly the size of South Carolina — between 2016 and 2040 if current development trends continue. “Agrivoltaics,” or the dual use of land for solar power and agriculture, is a way for both industries to utilize the same ground.

For the solar companies, the tie-up brings potential cost savings and a reduced carbon footprint. Standard Solar, a Brookfield Renewable company that has more than 350 megawatts of US solar, is using grazing in the Midwest as well as on some of its rockier sites in New England, where it’s tough to maneuver traditional landscaping tools.

“You have to cut the grass because it’s a fire hazard,” said Jay Smith, director of asset management at Standard Solar. “The sheep do a better job supporting the biodiversity than a conventional mower.”

Sheep are better caretakers than cows — which are sometimes too tall to walk under the panels and like to scratch themselves on the posts, Standard Solar said. They’re also better than goats, which sometimes climb on structures and chew the wires. Even the Cincinnati Zoo is turning to grazing sheep for vegetation management around solar panels on some of its land.

[Tanuki]

1. Love this! 🌞 🐏 🐑 Another promising idea is to place solar panels over parking lots.

The space is already in use, so no further disruption to the ecology is involved.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/putting-solar-panels-atop-parking-lots-a-green-energy-solution


..."Despite the green image, putting solar facilities on undeveloped land is often not much better than putting subdivisions there. Developers tend to bulldoze sites, “removing all of the above-ground vegetation,” says Rebecca Hernandez, an ecologist at the University of California at Davis. That’s bad for insects and the birds that feed on them. In the Southwest deserts where most U.S. solar farms now get built, the losses can also include “1,000-year-old creosote shrubs, and 100-year-old yuccas,” or worse. The proposed 530-megawatt Aratina Solar Project around Boron, California, for instance, would destroy almost 4,300 western Joshua trees, a species imperiled, ironically, by development and climate change. (It is currently being considered for state protected status.) In California, endangered desert tortoises end up being translocated, with unknown results, says Hernandez. And the tendency to cluster solar facilities in the buffer zones around protected areas can confuse birds and other wildlife and complicate migratory corridors.

The appeal of parking lots and rooftops, by contrast, is that they are abundant, close to customers, largely untapped for solar power generation, and on land that’s already been stripped of much of its biological value.

A typical Walmart supercenter, for instance, has a five-acre parking lot, and it’s a wasteland, especially if you have to sweat your way across it under an asphalt-bubbling sun. Put a canopy over it, though, and it could support a three-megawatt solar array, according to a recent study co-authored by Joshua Pearce of Western University in Ontario. In addition to providing power to the store, the neighboring community, or the cars sheltered underneath, says Pearce, the canopy would shade customers — and keep them shopping longer, as their car batteries top up. If Walmart did that at all 3,571 of its U.S. super centers, the total capacity would be 11.1 gigawatts of solar power — roughly equivalent to a dozen large coal-fired power plants. Taking account of the part-time nature of solar power, Pearce figures that would be enough to permanently shut down four of those power plants."....(more)

[usonian]

2. And irrigation channels. It's in the works, IIRC, and will drastically reduce evaporative loss.

[crickets]

3. Using solar panels as shade umbrellas over parking lots is a huge win-win. nt

[Think. Again.]

4. there are Soooo many areas...

...that we can use that won't impact natural lands, and could even provide additional benefits like shade, rain protection, etc.

I once read an article on a plan to cover the concrete parts of the Los Angeles "river" with solar panels that made a lot of sense.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. Goats would be bad for solar panels

We had goats when I was a kid and these goats loved to get on top of any car that was near them

[hunter]

6. Wouldn't the land best be restored to a natural state?

I don't understand the appeal of future high volume electronic waste and hoofed locusts (as John Muir called them.)

[usonian]

8. Just a wild thought here.

That might be feasible if we didn't have a world culture of "creative destruction" and "endless growth" (needed to make profits and concentrate wealth). Alas.

For what it's worth, plants are not only solar converters, but seem to employ complex quantum-mechanical effects.

https://www.azoquantum.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=281

But in the near term, it seems that creative destruction and endless growth are called upon to rescue us from themselves.

[Kaleva]

7. One of my goals is to raise a herd of American Black Belly sheep.

Putting up some solar panels in the pasture would be a two-fer.