By Shannon Hackett, Virginia Mercury
Virginia faces growing energy tensions from all sides, such as demand skyrockets, the Virginia Clean Economy Act’s mandate to convert to carbon-free energy farms, and questions about how to bolster solar while preserving agricultural land. A new project by the Piedmont Environmental Council is trying to demonstrate how solar panels and crops can coexist through agrivoltics.
In Loudoun County, PEC has added 42 solar panels alongside and above crops to test how energy and food production can work together. Several county zoning meetings in Virginia in recent years have revolved around concerns about losing agricultural land to build solar facilities. The project’s design mimics traditional farm practices, while making some modifications that make it easier to interact with the energy source and collect data.
“The goal is to get growers to look at it and get them to examine it, draw on it, make sure they’re asking the questions that come out of their experience,” said PEC President Chris Miller. “And at the same time get policymakers at the local and state level to start looking at it.”
The panels, sitting on a quarter acre of the 8-acre farm, generate about 17 kilowatts of electricity and the project has 23 kilowatts of battery storage on site. This amount of power is not high in the scale of energy needs of the state. But most of the time it’s enough to power the entire farm — including its water pumps and greenhouse. Project organizers say that if Commonwealth farmers made such an investment, it would lead to major energy gains.
“The scale is also a fundamental part of the project. Ultimately you have about 39,000 farms in Virginia and on average, I think, 190 acres each. If you did a small project on each of them, or you did a megawatt project on each one that’s 40 gigawatts of energy,”
Crops that would perform best under rows were selected for the project, while warm and cool season crops are also being tested. The community farm donates its vegetable produce to community food banks, so the selected crops also match the food banks often need. They are also testing raised bed crops to demonstrate how community farms can benefit from similar solar projects.
Data on crop yield, disease and pest pressure will be collected and shared on the PEC website. The project director is also testing the soil for PFA, or forever chemicals, to make sure what’s inside the panels isn’t affecting the ground below.
“We’re also looking at moisture retention, so if the crops aren’t growing with fewer panels, and some work around periodically testing the soil for any potential contaminants coming off the solar panels, it needs to be watered less,” said Community Farm Manager Teddy Ptsioukos. (But) there’s not a ton of data to validate those concerns.”
The same crops will be planted side by side to compare how the crops do in direct sunlight under the panel.
Project managers said that after the initial investment in panels, which in their case included transformer upgrades, growers could save thousands of dollars through net metering programs over the life of the projects, especially when energy prices rise. PEC is an intervener in the Dominion net metering case currently before the State Corporation Commission.
PEC also hopes to work with lawmakers to change zoning regulations for such small-scale solar projects.
“A lot of codes are based on utility scale, but if you want to put a couple of electrical walls in a shed, you really shouldn’t be up against the same restrictions as a grid-scale battery would be,” Kapur said.
Under the Virginia Clean Economy Act, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power Co. must develop 16,100 megawatt-hours of offshore wind and solar power by 2035. By 2045, they will have to be completely carbon-free in their energy use. PEC project organizers say the solution they’re proposing can help meet those goals.
“If we could get 3,000 landowners to do this, that would have a significant impact, and that’s something we know is achievable,” Miller said. “So, let’s get started. Let’s do it in a constructive and positive way and be part of the solution to such a big clean energy challenge.”
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