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The wide expanses of rural America are foundational to one of the nation’s oldest businesses — raising crops and farm animals — along with one of the youngest: producing cheap, renewable energy.
Sometimes in conflict but often in harmony, the two industries are coming together in Raleigh, North Carolina, to form one of the Southeast’s first training facilities for agrivoltaics, in which the same land is used for agriculture and solar photovoltaic panels.
North Carolina State University launched the site last month and next semester will offer hands-on learning that focuses on solar grazing — sheep feeding on grasses and other vegetation beneath large ground-mounted arrays.
At the training ground, engineering students and solar professionals will be able to tinker with three rows of solar panels, learning how to mount and dismount panels from a unique racking system built for hilly terrain. Many might pet a sheep for the first time.
Meanwhile, would-be shepherds studying at N.C. State and practicing farmers could glimpse their first solar panels up close and learn how livestock interact with the equipment and its wires, inverters, and other related contraptions.
“A lot of sheep producers, they might be interested in solar grazing, but they’ve never stood next to a solar panel,” said Andrew Weaver, an assistant professor in animal science at the university. “What do these solar panels look like? How do they work? How do you graze around that panel?”
When it comes to large-scale solar projects, many rural communities in North Carolina and beyond have faced a steep learning curve. Just ask Steve Kalland, longtime director of the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center, based at N.C. State.
The center has been conducting outreach sessions in rural North Carolina for years, countering both misinformation and a genuine lack of knowledge about whether solar panels degrade soil or threaten the state’s agricultural lands. Though the answer to both queries is generally no, he believes cooperation beats confrontation.
“We’re top five in the country in solar deployment and under 1% of agricultural land that’s being used for solar,” said Kalland, relaying stats backed up by the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. “So I’m not worried about using up all of the agricultural land in the short run, the medium run, or even the long run. But finding ways to do things better together is always a better outcome.”
That’s why bringing solar and agriculture together for instruction at the university “is a perfect marriage in a lot of ways,” Kalland said.
Nevados, which produces solar mounting systems engineered for slopes of up to 37%, donated equipment for the Raleigh site and helped design the curriculum. The Oakland, California–based company wanted an East Coast “sandbox” to better connect with the solar developers that buy its product on the other side of the country.
The Nevados technology, which repositions solar panels throughout the day to follow the sun, doesn’t require leveling the ground. That makes it well suited for agrivoltaics: Pastureland often undulates, and cropland is best undisturbed, said Rahul Chandra, vice president of product marketing at the company.
“What makes it special is that we can get away with almost zero grading underneath the array,” Chandra said. “That gives you some advantages, whether it’s for livestock grazing or maintaining crop production [and] natural soil chemistry. Our whole ethos with the technology is ‘don’t touch the topsoil.’”
Many members of the solar industry are risk averse, Chandra said, making exposure to the relatively new Nevados design — which has been on the market for five years — vital to the tech’s takeoff.
“The N.C. State training is two parts,” he said. “You spend a few hours in the boring classroom right next door, and then you get to go hands-on with the tracking system. It’s a proven model in the solar industry.”
Weaver is eager to give his students practical experience, too. A sheep and goat specialist, he teaches a class on managing the ruminants that includes a lecture on solar grazing.
With the new training center up and running, Weaver said, he can better help pupils grapple with the nuances of raising sheep around solar infrastructure. “What can you touch? What don’t you touch? When do you call the solar company?”
Solar developers and operators can also learn some subtleties of sheep management, Weaver said. How do technicians move the livestock away from an area that needs repair while ensuring the animals still have water and a place to graze? When do they need to call a shepherd?
There’s no set formula for solar grazing, Weaver added. An acre of solar field can usually sustain between one and five sheep. Some immense solar projects can host a flock of sheep year-round; others contract with grazers the same way they would a mowing company.
A general rule of thumb is that grazing can cut mowing frequency in half, reducing the need for fossil-fueled combustion engines, Weaver said. “To me, mowing is kind of hypocritical if we want to preach clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Like all livestock, sheep produce climate-warming pollution of their own, mostly in the form of methane. But solar grazing proponents say some of that can be offset with management practices that enhance a pasture’s ability to soak up carbon from the atmosphere.
Weaver is passionate about how solar projects could help foster a new generation of farmers who wouldn’t need to own land for pasture.
“Unless you come from family ground, it’s just about impossible to afford land these days,” he said. “Solar has really opened a door that the sheep industry hasn’t had for 50-plus years.”
Indeed, solar grazing is on the rise in North Carolina and across the country, with some 113,000 sheep responsible for maintaining the vegetation beneath 129,000 acres of solar panels, according to the American Solar Grazing Association.
The group doesn’t publish breakdowns by state, but the South leads the way, with nearly 62,000 sheep and over 87,000 acres — largely thanks to solar-abundant Texas.
And though the domestic lamb market today is small, with most of the meat Americans consume originating in Australia or New Zealand, that could change if more solar developers and sheep farmers work together, Weaver believes.
“You have a product that is 10,000 miles fresher, potentially has been harvested within the last week, and has a great story behind it,” he said.
Weaver says the future of solar grazing is bright: Many acres of existing solar projects aren’t yet maintained by sheep — meaning there’s lots of room for growth — and he predicts rural communities will increasingly require new arrays to include agrivoltaics.
“There’s a lot of young people that want to farm and don’t want to sit at a desk all day,” Weaver said. “Ten years ago, they didn’t have a choice: Finding that job in town was the only option. Now, with solar grazing, the opportunity exists to raise a large number of sheep at scale and make a good living doing it.”
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