Tag Archive for: Pollinator-Friendly

Case Study: Oregon’s Planet- and Pollinator-friendly Solar Site

By Briana Kerber, Fresh Energy

Developer: Pine Gate Renewables
Location: Medford, Oregon
Size: 13 MW, 41 acres (scorecard)
Soil type: Clay
Annual precipitation: 49 inches
Ground cover: A diverse pollinator seed mix of more than 30 types of native wildflowers and grasses


Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Solar Energy Technology office, the Photovoltaic Stormwater Management Research and Testing (PV-SMaRT) project from Great Plains Institute, DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Fresh Energy, and the University of Minnesota is using five existing ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) solar sites across the United States to study stormwater infiltration and runoff at solar farms. Together, the five sites represent a range of elevations, slopes, soil types, and geographical locations that will help solar developers and owners, utility companies, communities, and clean energy and climate advocates better understand how best to support solar projects and the host communities in which they are built, in particular lowering the costs of clean energy development while ensuring protection of the host community’s surface and ground waters.

Site Background

Situated on 41 acres of agricultural land that previously had a rich, long tradition of dairy grazing, the 13-megawatt (MW) Eagle Point Solar project owned by Pine Gate Renewables is part of the company’s SolarCulture Initiative, which promotes sustainable agriculture, collaboration with communities, and research for intelligent solar development. In the early morning—and again in the late evening—the panels at this site sit about one meter above the ground, rotating to three meters above the ground at midday. This allows mowing equipment to pass through when the site needs maintenance, an essential aspect of maintaining quality habitat at solar sites.

After determining that experienced landscapers would be able to restore and maintain the groundcover, Pine Gate decided to make Eagle Point one of the first projects for the SolarCulture program. A flat site with clay soil and 16 inches of annual rainfall, this site’s PV-SMaRT monitoring equipment was installed in August of 2020 and will be in operation through August of 2022.

Pine Gate hired landscape design consultant Regenerate to come up with a vegetation plan, and Understory Consulting, an ecological consulting and restoration service nonprofit operating in Oregon and northern California, was chosen to develop a multi-year plan to seed the site with native flowers and grasses tucked underneath the site’s tracking photovoltaic (PV) panels in two-in-portrait configuration. The seed mix was developed by Sean and Kathryn Prive, who Maggie Graham, a researcher with Oregon State University and ecologist at Understory, describes as the “dreamers behind the project who led the restoration at the site.” The multi-year plan developed by the Prives is intended to restore the understory of the solar site to a native prairie and support native and domesticated pollinators.

Remarking on the site’s dual uses, Maggie mentions the support the site provides for both pollinator habitat and seed collection for the Rogue Native Plant Partnership. Facilitated by Understory, the Rogue Basin Partnership, and the Medford, Oregon, District Office of the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, the Rogue Native Plant Partnership focuses on increasing the diversity and availability of native plant materials in the Rogue Valley, a much-loved valley region in southwestern Oregon known for its wild and scenic Rogue River that runs from Oregon’s famous Crater Lake out to the Pacific Ocean.

When asked about challenges the team has run into at the site, Maggie offers a typical answer: “Weeds.” She adds, “Any time you’re trying to take a piece of land and modify the vegetation, weeds are a challenge.” Drought, too, has introduced some hurdles for the site to clear, as much as Maggie notes that “Drought in the west is ongoing, and normal to a degree.”

Despite the challenges, Maggie says, “It was especially neat to uncover what this site holds that had been obscured by previous vegetation. When we eliminated the weed pressure from a lot of the rhizomatous, introduced grasses—grasses that almost creep and grow quickly across a piece of land—we found a strong native seed bank and bulb bank at the site. This included a field of camas, which is a culturally important plant in the region.”

Additionally, the site boasts co-benefits unique to pollinator-friendly solar farms—honeybee hive hosting, native seed collection, and research, too. “This site in particular has a local beekeeper, John Jacob, on site who has expressed an appreciation for the late season forage that the site provides.” Jacob, owner and founder of Old Sol Apiaries and former president of the Southern Oregon Beekeepers Association, determined that Eagle Point would be an ideal location for his honeybee hives, and an agreement with Pine Gate ensured that Jacob could place a few dozen hives on the perimeter of the farm.

The shade from the site’s solar panels increased the abundance of flowers under the panels and delayed the timing of their bloom, which provides forage later into the season, Maggie says. She adds, “The native seed collection is especially unique—it’s wonderful to have enough seed production at one site to help support other ecological restorations. We’re fortunate to benefit from Pine Gate’s willingness to use this site for repeated research projects. This is one of four that I know is happening at Eagle Point.”

Research Process

As discussed in the first PV-SMaRT case study on Connexus Energy’s Minnesota site, when engineers and researchers sit down to plan out or conduct analyses on clean energy developments like solar farms, they often utilize something called a design storm to test how well the site will hold up against an extreme weather event like a flood. A design storm is a test flood event of a certain magnitude—the higher the magnitude, the more intense the test storm. These tests help researchers and engineers to model and analyze rainfall and soil moisture, as well as to determine how fast excess water soaks into the ground during extreme storms.

Jake Galzki, a researcher with the University of Minnesota who is part of the modeling team for the PV-SMaRT project, says, “The Eagle Point site is the heaviest clay soil in the study, which is generally associated with lower infiltration rates. However, this site has a deeper crop rooting depth than some of the other sites, and Hydrus modeling showed slightly more infiltration than the shallower soils in the study. Approximately half of the 100-year design storm was infiltrated in the model simulations.”

Aaron Hanson, Energy Program Specialist at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, says, “A key outcome of this project was to provide clarity on how solar farms and select ground cover impact storm water runoff at large-scale developments. This site is providing key insights to our model that in turn will help the solar industry, state and local governments, and communities understand the impacts and make better decisions.”

Based on the field research and modelling completed on this site and the other four sites across the country—New York, Georgia, Minnesota, and Colorado—the University of Minnesota team has also developed a stormwater runoff calculator. The modeling results from the calculator demonstrate that, under most site conditions, if soils are not compacted and deep-rooted vegetation is established, solar farms result in significant decrease in runoff compared to agricultural land uses. The calculator will be publicly available for use by local and state regulators, solar industry contractors and developers, and water quality advocates. GPI is modifying the interim best practice guide completed last fall to accompany the calculator and reflect the final modeling results.

Project Site Benefits

In the eyes of the project’s core team, the Eagle Point site presents some specific observations on another key aspect of the PV-SMaRT project’s focus: permitting. For reference, the federal government generally delegates administration of stormwater permitting, required under the Clean Water Act, to individual states. While based on a common foundation, state stormwater permitting processes will always reflect each state’s unique ecosystems and water quality priorities; therefore, solar projects must adapt to these differences.

Remarking on that adaptation process at the Eagle Point site, Brian Ross, vice president and project lead at Great Plains Institute says: “The Eagle Point site in Oregon gives us a West Coast example to demonstrate the national implications of the scientific findings, best practices, and final runoff calculator. Each state interprets the Clean Water Act regulations somewhat differently and looking at the Eagle Point site further demonstrates the applicability of the science across different regulatory and permitting regimes.”

Stakeholder Feedback and What’s Next

Like the other PV-SMaRT sites, data and observations from the Eagle Point site now serve as a benchmark as the project’s research team continues to gather insight about each of the five project sites across the country. Ongoing findings at the Eagle Point site further validate the project’s recommended best practices for solar developments and stormwater management: It is possible to help lower the soft costs of clean energy development and of ongoing maintenance, protect the host community’s surface and ground waters, create needed habitat, and sequester carbon in the soil, all while helping craft a sustainable clean energy future that will benefit everyone for generations to come.

Throughout 2022, experts and stakeholders will be reconvening in this process to continue to examine and provide feedback on this foundational research. Read the first PV-SMaRT case study on Connexus Energy’s Minnesota site, the second case study on SolAmerica Energy’s Georgia site, and stay tuned for updates on the project from Great Plains Institute. There will be a webinar talking about each of the three PV-SMaRT case studies this September—we invite you to join us! More details coming soon.

Photos

*Photo credit for all photos: Maggie Graham

Pollinator-Friendly Solar in Plains, Georgia: A former U.S. president’s clean energy legacy

Pollinator-Friendly Solar in Plains, Georgia: A former U.S. president’s clean energy legacy

By Briana Kerber

Sunset with Gaillardia and Solar Array. Photo: Jill Stuckey

With clean energy developments continuing to ramp up across the United States, more attention is being paid toward how best to develop these projects at the pace and scale that the climate crisis requires while also ensuring that we are taking care of the sites and communities that host those projects.    That’s where a national project from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Great Plains Institute (GPI), Fresh Energy, and the University of Minnesota comes in. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Solar Energy Technology Office, the Photovoltaic Stormwater Management Research and Testing (PV-SMaRT) project is using five existing ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) solar sites across the United States to study stormwater infiltration and runoff at solar farms.

Together, the five sites represent a range of slopes, soil types, geographical locations, and PV configurations that will help solar developers and owners, utility companies, communities, and clean energy and climate advocates better understand how best to support solar projects and the host communities in which they are built, lowering the costs of clean energy development while ensuring protection of the host community’s surface and ground waters.

An early introduction to clean energy advocacy

Former President Jimmy Carter was an early advocate for clean energy development across the United States, from the West Wing of the White House to pockets of rural America, like his hometown of Plains, Georgia. Today, seven acres of a 25-acre parcel of former President Carter’s land, where peanuts and soybeans used to grow, is now home to a solar farm that can power more than half of Plains, a city of around 640 people. Situated in the middle of what is now a neighborhood, the project began when solar developer SolAmerica Energy approached the former President’s family about the possibility of installing panels on the land. That solar site now feeds into Georgia Power’s grid and is helping restore pollinator habitat, a well-known priority for former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who helped create the Rosalynn Carter Butterfly Trail.

A flat site with sandy clay soil, Carter Farms hosts 3,852 solar panels to provide 1.3 megawatts of electricity to the Plains community via tracking, one-in-portrait arrays. As shown in Figure 1, the site is testing three separate seed mixes to monitor how the various ground cover intersects with stormwater management:

  1. Crabgrass, annual ryegrass, and panicum
  2. Low-diversity pollinator mix (seven species): Indian blanketflower, common sensitive-plant, butterfly milkweed, southern elephant’s-foot, finged bluestar, rayless sunflower, southern beardtongue
  3. High-diversity pollinator mix (18 species): Indian blanketflower, partridge pea, blackeyed Susan, yarrow, lanceleaf coreopsis, southern elephant’s-foot, mistflower, and others

Figure 1. A map of the seed mixes on six different plots at the Carter Farms solar site in Plains, Georgia. Graphict: Aaron Hanson

Since the site was first built to accommodate the solar industry standard of planting some sort of grass underneath the panels, which requires more frequent mowing, the PV-SMaRT team and local partners are still monitoring the six different plots at the Carter Farms site to determine the full impact of the pollinator-friendly seed mixes. Bodie Pennisi, a professor of horticulture with the University of Georgia, reports that, so far, the dominant grasses in the control areas have been crabgrass, annual ryegrass, and panicum. “2022 is the year when we expect the strongest bloom from the perennial species, and we are really excited to see what pollinators and other beneficial insects come to the flowers.” Although the site plots are still being monitored, that hasn’t stopped researchers and other project participants from drawing initial conclusions and getting excited about the many benefits the pollinator mixes will bring for biodiversity, the climate, and SolAmerica’s site management costs. Figure 3 shows a morning bloom of black-eyed susans from the high-diversity pollinator mix.

Figure 2. Blackeyed Susan flowers blooming at sunrise at the Carter Farms solar site. Photo: Jill Stuckey

Designing solar sites with extreme weather in mind

As discussed in Fresh Energy’s first PV-SMaRT case study on Connexus Energy’s Minnesota site, when engineers and researchers sit down to plan out or conduct analyses on clean energy developments like solar farms, they often utilize something called a design storm to test how well the site will hold up against an extreme weather event like a flood. A design storm is essentially a test flood event of a certain magnitude—the higher the magnitude, the more intense the test storm for modelling and analysis purposes. These tests help researchers and engineers monitor rainfall and soil moisture as well as determine how fast excess water soaks into the ground during extreme storms. Figure 3 shows the water monitoring equipment at the site.

Figure 3. Water monitoring equipment sits at the west end of the Carter Farms solar site. Photo: Jake Galzki

Jake Galzki, a University of Minnesota researcher who is part of the modeling team for the PV-SMaRT project, says, “The Carter Farms site has a deeper profile than other sites we’ve studied – it’s a meter and a half to the nearest restrictive layer. That means the rooting depth for ground cover is deeper than other sites. And the soil at this site is essentially a 1:1 sandy clay, meaning it is comprised of 50 percent clay and 50 percent sand.” He adds, “In terms of measuring the runoff at Carter Farms against the other four project sites, the runoff here is moderate despite being the wettest site we’ve studied. We noted good infiltration capacity when testing the 100-year design storm, but we also did see some runoff due to the high clay content of the soil, which is very typical during such extreme events.”

Aaron Hanson, energy program specialist at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, says: “It’s great that we have such diversity among our research sites. The climate and soil conditions in southern Georgia are quite different from what we are used to in Minnesota. The ‘growing season’ is actually reversed. Rather than having snow cover in the winter, they have a dormant period during the heat of the summer. This diversity of research site conditions will ultimately help our model to be applicable for solar developments across the country.”

Craig Kvien, one member of the Georgia-based site management crew, is an agricultural specialist whose expertise with innovative solar and agricultural projects runs decades deep. Craig says that the process for tending to the plots has come with its challenges, namely weeds. “We’ve got a team of people who’ve been sampling and documenting the plant and insect species that are out there over time, including the ones we anticipated, and those we did not,” Craig says with a chuckle. He adds, “Part of the process for ensuring the pollinator mixes can thrive requires a good amount of effort to beat down the weeds that also want to grow.”

But Craig isn’t daunted by what he calls a “standard mix of hard-to-get-rid-of weeds, which includes briars.” When asked what it is about the project that excites him the most, he doesn’t hesitate to remark on the beauty of a multi-use property: “There are lots of options. It seems silly not to do something useful with the land underneath the solar panels, particularly if you can make a difference somehow, either by enhancing the pollinator species in the area—or making or saving an extra buck.”

Science reflected in the practice

Brian Ross, vice president of renewable energy at Great Plains Institute and project lead for PV-SMaRT, says, “This site in Georgia helps bring both scientific validity to the modeling and runoff coefficients, adding diversity of soil types, hydrology, and land use, but also to develop regulatory, permitting, and project best practices that flow from the science.” He adds, “Georgia regulators have been participating in these discussions and helping ensure that the science is ultimately reflected in the practice.”

John Buffington, vice president of SolAmerica Energy, says the pollinator piece was a key consideration for the company. “SolAmerica was originally motivated by the opportunity to contribute to the restoration of pollinator habitats,” John says. “We think supporting these initiatives is the right thing to do and gives us an opportunity to be a more engaged member of the communities in which our solar developments are located. Later, we were excited to hear about the stormwater and cost-management aspects of pollinator-friendly solar.”

According to John and the SolAmerica team, pollinator-friendly solar has the potential to change the whole solar industry. “We could have done a pollinator project and just been quiet about it,” he admits. “But that wasn’t the intent, because we were trying to inspire the industry, and the Carter site was a great vehicle for that. These pollinator-friendly and stormwater supporting practices help contribute to better management of a site by reducing the amount of our budget that goes to mowing and other maintenance. So, beyond the pollinator restoration aspect, there are clear business benefits to doing this with a solar site.”

Ongoing stakeholder feedback

Like the other PV-SMaRT sites, data and observations from the Carter Farms site now serve as a benchmark as the PV-SMaRT research team continues to gather insight about each of the five project sites across the country. Overall, ongoing findings at the Carter Farms site further validate the project’s recommended best practices for solar developments and stormwater management: We can help lower the soft cost of clean energy development and of ongoing maintenance, protect the host community’s surface and ground waters, create needed habitat, and sequester carbon in the soil, all while helping craft a truly sustainable clean energy future that will benefit everyone for generations to come—just as the Carters have long worked towards.

Throughout 2022, experts and stakeholders will be reconvening in this process to continue to examine and provide feedback on this foundational research. Read the first PV-SMaRT case study on Connexus Energy’s Minnesota site, get the latest updates from Great Plains Institute, and stay tuned for the third and final PV-SMaRT case study from Fresh Energy and partners.

A version of this article was originally published via Fresh Energy. Read it here.

Case Study: EDF Renewables Amprior Site Agrisolar

Arnprior Solar site in fall and winter
All photos courtesy of EDF Renewables

EDF Renewables (EDFR) has dedicated its efforts for over 35 years to create a sustainable energy economy.  They have developed nearly 24 GW and continue to manage nearly 13 GW of wind and solar energy generating projects in North America.  Among these renewable energy sites is the Arnprior solar project located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Arnprior is a 23.4MW array that sits on nearly 180 acres and provides enough power to meet the peak energy demands of around 7000 homes. When completed in 2009 the array doubled the solar PV energy generating capacity of the entire country of Canada. Six years after construction was completed, one of the landowners, Diane Egan, expressed an interest to EDFR on how the site would be returned to agricultural land after decommissioning.

Beehives at Arnprior

In 2015, the asset management team at EDFR started by curtailing the use of herbicides and pesticides, but they didn’t stop there on biodiverse and environmental projects at the site. By 2016, with all of the news coverage of decreasing bee populations, the team reached out to Marianne and Matt Gee of Gees Bees Honey Company to install hives at Arnprior. They started by installing two hives at the site that produced nearly 100 jars of honey per year. In 2022, there are now five hives that produce over 300 jars of honey annually.

Monarch larvae at Arnprior

In July of 2017, EDFR was awarded by the Government of Canada to provide a complete habitat for the monarch butterfly. The Arnprior site was the first of any solar project in Canada to be awarded by the Habitat Stewardship Program for Species at Risk (HSP SAR). EDFR formed a partnership with Victoria Wojcik and Kathleen Law of Pollinator Partnership, the worlds largest pollinator focused non-profit organization, to begin planting native wild flowers and milkweed. After a targeted seeding plan and professional training program, milkweed began to grow and thrive. Milkweed is the exclusive host plant that monarch larvae feed on. Within only one month of the award the larvae and iconic butterflies began to appear.

Chris Moore, Lyndsey Smith, and Bunny of Shady Creek Lamb Company

Furthermore in 2017, the Arnprior site launched a pilot program to use sheep grazing for vegetation management. Chris Moore and partner Lyndsey Smith of Shady Creek Lamb Company brought 50 ewes to manage the growth of the vegetation around the panels. EDFR found that not only did sheep grazing the vegetation under the solar panels align with vegetation management needs, but it also provided a mutually beneficial and effective solution for local sheep farmers interested in expanding their flock without having to buy or rent additional land.  Shady Creek Lamb Co. now had an opportunity to be paid for grazing.  Now in 2022, after lambing on-site, 500 sheep can be seen roaming around from spring to fall.  Shady Creek Lamb Co. has benefitted from dual-use by having access to additional land allowing them to expand their flock, grow their business and produce grass fed free range lamb and fiber for local markets.

Overall, the implementation of apiaries, monarch habitats and sheep grazing at the Arnprior site help to conserve farmland and promote healthy ecosystem biodiversity.  The site continues to maintain and expand the biodiversity projects exemplifying dual-use/agrivoltaics as a win-win solution for EDFR, the solar and agricultural communities and businesses being supplied by the honey, lamb, wool and electricity.

An ewe enjoys the shade of the solar array.
The flock is unaffected by the solar array

Case Study: A Pollinator-Friendly Solar Site in Minnesota that Manages Stormwater.

By Briana Kerber, Fresh Energy

As we continue to deploy clean energy across the United States, more attention is being paid to how best to develop clean energy projects at the pace and scale that the climate crisis requires, while also ensuring that we are taking care of the sites and communities that host those projects. That’s where a national project from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Great Plains Institute (GPI), Fresh Energy, and the University of Minnesota comes in. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Solar Energy Technology office, the Photovoltaic Stormwater Management Research and Testing (PV-SMaRT) project is using five existing ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) solar sites across the United States to study stormwater infiltration and runoff at solar farms.

Jake Galzki, researcher at the University of Minnesota, measures water infiltration and runoff at Connexus Energy’s Ramsey Renewable Station site. Photo: Aaron Hanson

Together, the five sites represent a range of slopes, soil types, geographical locations, and PV configurations that will help solar developers and owners, utility companies, communities, and clean energy and climate advocates better understand how best to support solar projects and the host communities in which they are built, in particular lowering the costs of clean energy development while ensuring protection of the host community’s surface and ground waters.

On the banks of the Mississippi

With black-eyed Susan flowers dotting its expanse, the Minnesota site stands out among the five sites in the project. Situated on 18 acres of county-owned land near the Mississippi River in Ramsey, Minnesota, 30 miles northwest of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, Connexus Energy’s Ramsey Renewable Station is flanked by an RV service center to its east, a highway to the north, and a specialty vegetable farm that grows pumpkins and peppers on the project’s west and south sides. Thanks to a partnership with the team at Bare Honey, a Minnesota-based honey producer, the site hosts beehives, too. The 3.4 megawatts of solar panels face south, in a two-in-portrait configuration on a fixed-mount racking system. Throughout the array, the panels are 24-36″ above the ground at the lowest edge.

Blanketed with sandy soil, the Connexus site was seeded with a pollinator-friendly vegetation mix throughout the array and open areas. And the pollinator-friendly aspect was the lynch pin in garnering community support. Pollinator experts and ecologists testified this wouldn’t be just any solar development—it would be a seasonally blooming, low-growing meadow, giving work opportunities to local seeders and apiaries as well as providing ecological benefits to the nearby crops surrounding watershed. Between the sandy soil and the ground cover, when it rains—or even pours—any excess water is channeled into the ground. And that has significant meaning for researchers, solar developers, utilities, and clean energy advocates alike.  

The Minnesota PV-SMaRT site, developed by Engie Distributed Solar for Minnesota’s Connexus Energy. Photo:Aaron Hanson


Designing solar sites for extreme weather

Part of the process of planning out or conducting analyses on clean energy developments like solar farms is to test how well the site will hold up against an extreme weather event, like a flood. Engineers and researchers utilized three different design storms, essentially model storms of various magnitudes, to test Ramsey Renewable Station’s response and evaluate rainfall and soil moisture as well as determine how fast excess water would soak into the ground.

Through these models, the PV-SMaRT research team discovered that, against three design storms—two-year frequency storm, 10-year frequency storm, and 100-year frequency storm, the most intense of the three—all stormwater was channeled into the soil by the deep-rooted vegetation. Using both an InVEST modeling framework and a 2D Hydrus water model, University of Minnesota (UMN) researchers involved in the PV-SMaRT project, including Aaron Hanson and Jake Galzki, led by UMN professor Dr. David Mulla, have been able to keep tabs on the site, monitoring data from moisture sensors and comparing numbers from the site to those of other PV-SMaRT locations.

In fact, the team found that if they wanted to observe a runoff response, they had to actually reverse engineer the site to provoke one. For example, if the team conducted a model of the site in which vegetation suffered due to heavily compacted soil, then they could observe a runoff response. But, in virtually every other scenario, the combination of the diverse, deep-rooted pollinator-friendly vegetation and sandy soil ensures that all excess water soaks directly into the ground. In the research team’s eyes, that made the Connexus Energy Ramsey site a prototype for the rest of the PV-SMaRT project.

Benefits for the site and the study

And Brian believes that those involved in stormwater permitting at solar sites can learn something from the Ramsey example. “As a result of this study, stormwater permitting at sites such as this can be predictable and transparent to both the city or county and the developer,” he says, “reducing soft costs for solar developers while ensuring good water quality outcomes for regulators and habitat co-benefits for local communities.”

Vice President of Renewable Energy at GPI, Brian Ross notes that the site is important because it serves as a sort of bookend for the project: “It is a site that requires only ground cover green infrastructure in almost any circumstances. Comparing this site to our other project sites is incredibly useful. The characteristics at play at Connexus Energy’s Ramsey solar site point toward the potential capacity of a solar farm to mitigate not only the site but also contribute to broader watershed management.”

At Connexus Energy, Rob Davis, communications lead, points out that there was an overwhelmingly positive community response to the pollinator-friendly aspects of the project. “That’s why Connexus requires pollinator-friendly ground cover for all our solar sites, and it was especially important for this project due to the location near the Mississippi River and a specialty crop grower. The site’s soil and ground cover combine to easily handle heavy rainfall events,” he says.

Jake Galzki, researcher at the University of Minnesota, inspects soil and water monitoring equipment at Connexus Energy’s Ramsey Renewable Station site. Photo:Aaron Hanson

Rob notes that when the project was built, it did not have the advantage of accurate hydrological models for PV solar projects, which resulted in a requirement for grading that included carving a two-foot bump diagonally through the project. Thanks to insights from the PV-SMaRT study, Rob is confident that policy changes can be made to avoid grading in the future, as it unnecessarily disturbs the soil and creates an uneven surface for vehicles managing a site. In its place, Rob points to the high-performance vegetation, as it requires less grading and fewer stormwater containment basins and is therefore a much better use of limited maintenance funds.

Insights yet to come

Data and observations from the Connexus Ramsey site serve as a benchmark as the PV-SMaRT research team continues to gather insight about the four other project sites across the country. Overall, the findings from the Ramsey site further validate the project’s recommended best practices in exemplifying how we can lower the soft costs of clean energy development and of ongoing maintenance while protecting the host community’s surface and ground waters, create needed habitat, sequester carbon in the soil, and help craft a truly sustainable clean energy future that will benefit everyone for generations to come. Read more about ongoing validation of this foundational research via Great Plains Institute.

A version of this article was originally published via Fresh Energy. Read it here.

Solar PV and the Importance of Asking for High-Performance Ground Cover

By Rob Davis, Connexus Energy

Seven years after designing our first solar array, more than 20 million deep-rooted and pollinator-friendly plants across more than 150 acres are helping us control costs while maximizing local benefits for our community, resulting in national recognition and hometown goodwill — but it almost didn’t happen. Now, our standard practice is to require pollinator-friendly ground cover across all of the large-scale solar arrays that feed into our grid.

Connexus Energy is Minnesota’s largest electric cooperative and one of the 15 largest retail electric cooperatives nationwide, serving more than 320,000 people (141,000 meters) in parts of eight Minnesota counties. By embracing innovations including grid-scale battery storage, more than $25 million of local solar generation, customer-centric demand response programs, and automated metering infrastructure, Connexus has kept retail rates to our members flat for five consecutive years, while progressing with greening the grid.

Our first solar array—built in 2014 immediately adjacent to our headquarters—was initially designed with gravel, but a change set us on a different course. Working with one of our co-op members, Prairie Restorations of Princeton, Minnesota, a low-growing meadow seed mix was designed and implemented. Making productive use of the land under and around a ground-mounted solar array fits with one of the seven cooperative principles — Concern for Community. After a year or two of growing in, the site’s beneficial plants were crowding out weed species, reducing mowing costs, and making a positive impression with the community.

Connexus Energy’s HQ Solar Array Built in 2014. Photo: Rob Davis

Having now partnered in the development of four additional grid-scale solar projects—two of which include 15 MW of battery storage—Connexus’ decision to proactively ask for productive use of the land under and around the panels is continuing to pay dividends:

  • Last fall one of Minnesota’s award-winning filmmakers teamed up with Prairie Restorations on a short documentary, Pollinators, Prairie, and Power, which included Connexus Energy CEO Greg Ridderbusch. Click HERE to watch it.
  • The Associated Press recognized Connexus Energy’s leadership in solar land-use practices in a major news story that generated more than 150 million media impressions nationwide. Connexus was the only electric utility included in the expansive story that also included interviews with scientists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The story, “Bees, Sheep, Crops: Solar Developers Tout Multiple Benefits,” appeared in more than 240 media outlets in 41 states and territories.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Granholm highlighted Connexus Energy, sharing an extraordinary Minnesota Public Radio story about co-op innovation and use of local solar to keep rates flat. 

  • Research on one of Connexus’ solar projects by NREL, the University of Minnesota, and nonprofit partners is quantifying substantial stormwater benefits of deep-rooted ground cover. The PV-SMaRT project is monitoring and collecting water-quality data from five U.S. solar sites with different land and climate conditions. “The end goal is to develop research-driven tools and best practices that can be used by permitting authorities and PV developers to make more informed decisions on stormwater management measures that are tailored to the true impacts of a PV array on the environment,” says Jennifer Daw, principal investigator for the PV-SMaRT project and Group Manager for Strategy, Policy & Implementation at NREL.
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State Pollinator-Friendly Solar Initiatives

This white paper provides an overview of these state efforts and offers suggestions for what other states can do to promote solar while also creating or preserving healthy habitats for pollinators.

State-Pollinator-Friendly-Solar-InitiativesDownload
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Developing Utility-Scale Solar Power in Michigan at the Agriculture-Energy Nexus

The avenues by which Michigan and the United States provide the electricity essential for the economy and quality of life are in urgent need of change to ensure reliability and affordability while reducing the environmental impacts of this generation and improving social equity. These energy transitions are among the greatest challenges facing countries worldwide today. Another salient global challenge is reversing the decline in pollinators, including numerous species of native bees, honey bees, butterflies and birds. Pollinators provide critical ecosystem services but are facing numerous threats. These two grand challenges intersect as stakeholders work to identify the appropriate landscapes and places to develop solar power in Michigan. Agricultural land is desirable for solar installations for reasons that will be explained in this report. The state of Michigan is allowing solar developers to locate, or “site,” solar panels on preserved farmland but only if they develop habitat on this land to support pollinators. Other states are developing or have already developed standards developers must meet before they can advertise solar power plants as pollinator friendly. This intertwines these two urgent challenges in ways that are laudable; however, numerous questions of feasibility and best practices for achieving quality habitat remain unanswered. Multiple types of expertise and experiences from stakeholders from both energy and agricultural domains are required to successfully address these two challenges. In order to effect change, these stakeholders should collaborate more closely to overcome challenges of interpretation, problem definition and costs. This report identifies and characterizes those issues to facilitate stakeholders’ development of more optimal solutions. Overall, we identified several different paradigms through which stakeholders in Michigan viewed the appropriateness of solar power development on farmland. Some stakeholders viewed solar siting as a decision that should be left to an individual landowner because they have private property rights. Moreover, solar leasing would help to diversify farmers’ incomes, reducing the risks from seasonal and price volatility. Some stakeholders even saw solar leasing as part of farmland preservation, as it could enable a struggling farming operation to stay in business and a farmer to continue to own the land leased for solar rather than selling it for housing development. Other stakeholders saw farmland as a public good and opposed using prime farmland for solar power generation. These stakeholders often assumed that solar power could be targeted specifically toward low-quality agricultural land, or urban rooftops and brownfields rather than agricultural lands. For these stakeholders, inclusion of pollinator habitat and other multi-land uses tended to improve their opinion of solar power.

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Solar Beekeeping Agreement Template

This American Solar Grazing Association Beekeeping Agreement Template is a template for a contract between a solar site operator and a beekeeper for the establishment and maintenance of a solar site apiary. The arrangements outlined in this template may provide a number of benefits to both solar-site operators and beekeepers.

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Pollinator Friendly Solar Scorecard

This document includes entomologist-approved standards for the managed landscape of a solar PV facility to be considered “beneficial to pollinators.” The scorecard includes the following options for entering data: site planning and management, seed mixes, insecticide risk and outreach education, among others.

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