Making hay between solar panels?

[lastcowboy32]

At some point in the next few years, about 160 acres of hay ground that has historically been available to us for pasture or hay, will become solar panels.

I've been talking with the company that is doing the install. They recommend sheep for grazing. Cows are too big. Goats jump too much.

While I'm not averse to raising some sheep. The issue is land balance. If we had enough sheep to graze 160 acres, we would still need about the same amount of hay ground to feed the sheep during the winter.

Welcome to grass/pasture management in upstate NY; where animals are on some form of stored feed for 180 days of the year.

I still need to measure at one of the installations going in down the road. It looks as though we could easily fit our tractors down the rows between the panels, but we would have to convert our haying equipment to inline stuff... like some form of a front mount windrower about 8' wide.... and then either a round baler or inline square baler.

Is anybody doing this yet? Or do we have to figure it out from scratch?

 

[MJMJ]

I know its done, but maybe the spacing is wider in some. Because 8 feet wide max is going to be deal breaker.

 

[lastcowboy32]

(quoted from post at 09:53:42 06/05/23) I know its done, but maybe the spacing is wider in some. Because 8 feet wide max is going to be deal breaker.

Unless...you are forced to use the equipment that I see advertised to small landowners where they have these small walk-behind mowers/rakes/balers. But, that's a lot of acreage, even between the panels to use a glorified Troy-Bilt tiller.

Needs to be robotic...

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

(quoted from post at 09:53:42 06/05/23) I know its done, but maybe the spacing is wider in some. Because 8 feet wide max is going to be deal breaker.

I think he was talking about the equipment being 8 feet wide not the spacing between the panels.

In the solar installations I've seen the panels don't even seem to be that far apart. They're packed in there tight.

 

[lastcowboy32]

(quoted from post at 11:21:57 06/05/23)

(quoted from post at 09:53:42 06/05/23) I know its done, but maybe the spacing is wider in some. Because 8 feet wide max is going to be deal breaker.

I think he was talking about the equipment being 8 feet wide not the spacing between the panels.

In the solar installations I've seen the panels don't even seem to be that far apart. They're packed in there tight.

Yes... This is why I'm a little in the dark. Since the plans have been made to do the project in our area; (900 total acres across three townships) I have been looking at different arrays casually as my wife and I drive places.

I've seen some installations with tall/long panels that are maybe 25 feet long in rows spaced by almost 20 feet. One installation had enough row to row spacing that we could drive our tractor and seven foot haybine between the rows.

Then, I've seen installations with smaller panels in tighter rows. It's really all about how tall/long the panels are. They are designed so that the shadow from the tops of one row misses the bottom of the next (further north) row.

In the end, I will need the company doing our area to tell me what their spacing is. Right now, I just know that they prefer sheep...and it's a viable solution... until you get thousands and thousands of acres into solar panels... then, you surpass the ewe-sable space ;-)

I guess I rammed that farmer pun at yas.

Anyway... I've seen installations that could accomodate our tractor and haybine... and I've seen some that would barely accomodate your average garden tractor.

In the end, no matter how they do it, about 50% of the ground is still uncovered, because they have to space the arrays for the long shadows of the very low angle NY State winter sun.

And... even if somebody mows between the rows, they will still need sheep or something like that to get under the panels (otherwise... my tip is to buy stock in weedeaters)

 

[paul]

All the farm land here in southern Minnesota getting paneled over is fenced with chain link and appears mostly
graveled and sprayed weed free.

How the green new world will look here.

I hope some areas actually allow some farming in between. Here I think the liability of hitting a panel and causing
damage as well as the electrical aspect of it they just keep everyone out 24/7.

When they proposed these installations a decade ago my brother in law was all excited he couldnt understand why
I wasnt in the front of the line to have the farm covered in them. Money from the electricity lease and farm
underneath them, I could double my money!

That is how he read it in his urban newspaper.

Reality is the panels are not built tough enough to take livestock; the panels are pretty low to the ground basically
above snowfall accumulations. The panels collect most of the sunlight really not much left for a crop or grass so
even if you could livestock or grow under them you only have 30% sun not much production? It is electricity or food,
not both.

Paul

 

[paul]

You could find an 8 foot in the European mountain mowing machines Im sure. Remote control.

I wonder if they would require a battery powered model tho?

Paul

 

[ss55]

Shadow length changes with the season. Tall crops like corn might not work as well as shorter crops like pasture, hay, or soybeans. Tillage and fertilizer incorporation could be risky around buried cables. Prairie grasses with annual mowing might be the best cover crop for low maintenance weed control.

It might still be most efficient to simply pack the solar panels as close as is practical to minimize the area used. Spacing ten acres of panels twice as far apart to take up twenty acres instead of ten and allow farming between the panel rows would not be as convenient as simply filling ten acres with solar panels and leaving the other ten acres clear to farm.

 

[ss55]

Is it possible to farm between rows of grape vines or hops? If yes then the same crops and equipment might work to farm between solar panels?

 

[johnofnewhaven]

900 acres of solar panels. That is
just going to be beautiful. Yuck!

 

[caterpillar guy]

Around here I don't see anything done with them yet. Most close by are not done and would not have room to work between them. And the ground will probably be wet from the ruin of all the tile lines that used to be and now are punch out with I beams drove in everywhere on them.

 

[wp6529]

There is a big boom in solar installations over parking lots. If they can install high enough and durable enough for idiots in cars careening around under, farm animals and sane people in farm equipment under should also not be an issue.

As I mentioned in a similar thread, get the panels installed reasonably high and with a minimum of supports and open a flea market / farmer's market underneath.

 

[lastcowboy32]

(quoted from post at 14:36:19 06/05/23) All the farm land here in southern Minnesota getting paneled over is fenced with chain link and appears mostly
graveled and sprayed weed free.

How the green new world will look here.

I hope some areas actually allow some farming in between. Here I think the liability of hitting a panel and causing
damage as well as the electrical aspect of it they just keep everyone out 24/7.

When they proposed these installations a decade ago my brother in law was all excited he couldnt understand why
I wasnt in the front of the line to have the farm covered in them. Money from the electricity lease and farm
underneath them, I could double my money!

That is how he read it in his urban newspaper.

Reality is the panels are not built tough enough to take livestock; the panels are pretty low to the ground basically
above snowfall accumulations. The panels collect most of the sunlight really not much left for a crop or grass so
even if you could livestock or grow under them you only have 30% sun not much production? It is electricity or food,
not both.

Paul

As far as the placement.

I have wondered to anybody who will listen in person and on social media... why are they being installed on farmland?

Around here, every town bigger than a thousand people has an old K Mart-type building in the middle of town (or a few of them... my guess is about two for every 10,000 people in population) that was put out of business by the Walmart (also built on farmland... just outside of town).

Why aren't these zombie buildings and their parking lots paneled over?

Why didn't they look at the old industrial areas in cities like Utica, where hundreds of acres are covered in 100 - 150 year old brick building zombie factories... level them and put solar panels in the brownfield left behind???

I've brought up these questions and possibilities to anybody who will listen... regular people, nod their heads and go... that makes sense... but anybody who is in the solar industry just brushes the whole argument aside. "That's not what we are looking at."

Well... Why not?

Anyway... it's too late for a few thousand acres around here. 900 acres in an install near our farm. 1500 acres about 25 miles away as the crow flies.

It's a windmill that I'm done jousting, it's time to figure out how to live in the shadow, for me anyway. I can either choose to spend my life in politics and lobbying, or farming and engineering... can't do both.



Seems as though

 

[Leroy]

They will NOT allow anybody or any thing in the area of the pannels because
of dammage to them. A lot of solar fields around here.

 

[730pete]

(quoted from post at 08:37:31 06/05/23) At some point in the next few years, about 160 acres of hay ground that has historically been available to us for pasture or hay, will become solar panels.

I've been talking with the company that is doing the install. They recommend sheep for grazing. Cows are too big. Goats jump too much.

While I'm not averse to raising some sheep. The issue is land balance. If we had enough sheep to graze 160 acres, we would still need about the same amount of hay ground to feed the sheep during the winter.

Welcome to grass/pasture management in upstate NY; where animals are on some form of stored feed for 180 days of the year.

I still need to measure at one of the installations going in down the road. It looks as though we could easily fit our tractors down the rows between the panels, but we would have to convert our haying equipment to inline stuff... like some form of a front mount windrower about 8' wide.... and then either a round baler or inline square baler.

Is anybody doing this yet? Or do we have to figure it out from scratch?

I worked on a solar job installing them. Their is a driveline between each row so you are not able to drive thru when finished. All jobs I was on was fenced completely with chain link fence.

 

[paul]

Farmland needs sunshine to grow the crop. Solar panels need the sunshine to create the energy. They compete with each other, they can not ever share well. Its pretty
much one or the other.

Placing the panels in metro areas on the big roofs, over parking lots, as a sun shade for farmers markets makes an in creadable lot more sense. Only concern is need
that southern view of the skyline, but can workin so very many metro areas that are already paved and roofed over.

And so, what is happening of course? Flatten out farm land and cover with many many acres of panels.

Windmills are a different thing, they cause some noise and some flickering and need some clear air space so dont fit well in the metro areas. They have the same
issues in rural areas but far less people to complain about them.

I dont understand our society any more.

Paul

 

[lastcowboy32]

(quoted from post at 08:38:05 06/06/23) They will NOT allow anybody or any thing in the area of the pannels because
of dammage to them. A lot of solar fields around here.

The installations around us are being made, from the beginning, with the notion that some form of farming or grazing becomes cheap maintenance, and good PR. (sounds ironic or sarcastic, but it's just the fact of the matter)

 

[Texasmark]

Thank you but no thank you.....I can't imagine having to put up with that slope................