Maintaining solar farms requires routinely cutting back grass and weeds so they don’t block sunlight from the panels. Lawn mowers can’t easily maneuver between the sprawling array of packed panels—which is where sheep come in. Unlike goats, who chew on equipment, and cows, who are too large, sheep are the perfect height to get in-between panels. As such, they are currently employed at tens of …
Throughout the quest to transition to renewable energy, one problem has proven elusive to researchers: how to store large amounts of clean energy. Typically, clean energy has been dependent on the weather: wind energy needs wind, solar energy requires sun, and the lack of either means a lack of energy. To circumvent this, Oregon’s Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility is combining an array of renewable energy …
Jack’s Solar Garden—a community farm that grows under 32,000 solar panels and sells 1.2 megawatts of power back to the local grid in Longmont, Colorado—began nearly 50 years ago as a hay-producing operation in Byron Kominek’s family. But due to increasing corporate competition in the agricultural industry, the poorly profiting farm was in jeopardy, prompting Kominek to turn to solar infrastructure. In creating his unconventional …
