To all the challenges the solar industry is facing today, add one more: cultivating a domestic market for lamb meat. It may seem an unlikely mission for clean-energy developers, but in many states, including Illinois, grazing sheep between rows of photovoltaic panels is considered the most efficient form of agrivoltaics — the combination of solar and farming on the same land.
Solar advocates, researchers, and developers have given much attention to agrivoltaics. The practice includes growing crops like blueberries, tomatoes, or peppers in the shade of solar panels and letting cows or sheep graze around the arrays.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of agrivoltaics is that land is not being taken out of agricultural production in favor of clean energy, a concern that has stoked intense opposition to solar. The Trump administration codified this sentiment when the head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on Aug. 19 that the agency “will no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland.”
Illinois’ sprawling fields of corn and soybeans don’t coexist well with solar panels, but sheep do, making grazing a promising type of agrivoltaics for the state, proponents say.
Honestly, cows and solar panels would go good together as well.
Not horses, goats, or donkeys.
“But solar power takes fertile soil out of production and hurts farmers!”
Yet again, Republican policies hurt their own rural red state base.
One of the biggest challenges of solar fields (solar panels on grasslands) is the grass growing too high and interfering with the panels. With the panel density it is very hard to get mowing equipment in there. This makes pairing sheep with solar fields quite appealing.
How about goats?
Sheep ear grass evenly and leave an area still covered with grass to regrow
Goats eat down to the dirt and leave patches of grass undisturbed
