“Agrivoltaics” may not be a common term to many, but in Perry, it involves almost 1,000 sheep on a solar farm.
The large scale agrivoltaics project along I-75 in Houston County is the Houston Solar Project. It’s a 68-megawatt, 705-acre solar farm owned and operated by Silicon Ranch that provides clean energy to Georgia’s electric membership cooperatives, often referred to as EMCs. It’s also home to Katahdin sheep.
This farm is one of a much larger portfolio, both in Georgia and nationwide.
The solar energy and carbon solutions company owns and operates 182 solar farms in the U.S., with 22 open and operating in Georgia and eight more projects contracted. Half of those 22, making up 4,000 acres, are grazed by sheep.
Once the company has all 30 projects operating, their portfolio in Georgia will total a 2,400-megawatt capacity, enough to help power more than 400,000 homes, according to Quarter House PR, a third-party public relations company contracted by Silicon Ranch.
Silicon Ranch has employed over 6,500 Georgians, will generate $250 million in tax revenue, and has invested over $4 billion in the state across 17 counties, some of which are the poorest in state and country, according to Matt Beasley, chief commercial officer for Silicon Ranch. In some of those counties, they even reconstituted development authorities that had disassembled after so many years not being needed.
The Katahdin sheep that graze under the solar panels aren’t just average sheep. They have a genetic resistance to the animal’s biggest killer, the barber pole worm, while also being able to handle the heat and humidity of the southeast U.S.
The first sheep to come to this farm were originally bought from Roxanne Newton, owner and founder of Hound River Farms in Hahira, and a trailblazer in the genetic testing of this breed of sheep.
“We just keep pushing the genetics on top of the genetics ... to where you get to the point where there’s just no way that that lamb is ever going to die from parasites,” Newton said. “That’s a big, big deal.”
Thanks to the sheep, the land under the solar panels hasn’t been mowed in over a year. Plus, the soil is flourishing.
“With the parasite resistance and the nexus with energy production, there’s so much opportunity for improving the land under solar panels,” said Jim Malooley, director of Agrivoltaics for Silicon Ranch.
The sheep promote a diverse ecosystem and cleaner groundwater while allowing for less chemical inputs on the land, according to Malooley. Healthier soil offsets carbon emission and retains more water preventing erosion and runoff, too.
Silicon Ranch was introduced to regenerative farming practices — which focuses on soil health while combating climate change — in 2019 from Georgia farmer and now company partner, Will Harris, a fourth-generation cattleman and owner of White Oak Pastures, according to Beasley. Now they implement the practice they call “Regenerative Energy” at every solar project site that allows it.
“What those of us in this industry hear every time we go into a new community is ‘You’re going to degrade the soil, you’re going to degrade the land, you’re going to take it out of production,’ and ... the idea that we can do all these things on the same piece of property is, I think, one of the great achievements we’ve had...,” Beasley said.
“(We’re) moving in the same direction as natural processes would ... embracing all of all of the unknowns in the soils and the forages, in the chaos that’s there, and it turns out that there’s some there’s some rhythm in the chaos,” Malooley said.
Bringing the sheep industry back to the Southeast is an important part of this project, too, according to Malooley and Newton. Much of the sheep industry has been outsourced to Australia and New Zealand while most American sheep flocks today are in Utah, Nevada and Idaho.
Houston Solar is home to Silicon Ranch’s genetic improvement program, where there is a 26,000 square foot breeding barn.
”This barn allows us to improve animal welfare and facilitate data collection and genetic progress for breeding parasite-resistant sheep specifically for the South,” according to their website.
This genetic improvement program is in partnership with the National Sheep Improvement Program.
This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Macon Telegraph.
