By David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca
Agrivoltaics, or the idea of combining solar with farming could help save the family farm and help Canada get to a net-zero future.
Claude Mindorff is a farmer from Rosemary, Alberta, who has worked in the oil patch and now works in the renewable energy industry. He says solar and agriculture are two peas in a pod that can work together to enhance productivity and the viability of the family farm.
Sounds contrary right? But far from the refrain you hear all the time – renewable energy is not going to gobble up valuable farmland.
“There was a lot of concern about solar taking arable land out of production. With agrivoltaics, that’s completely not the case. In fact, we’re improving agriculture and showing a pathway to net-zero while we produce Canada’s food,” says Mindorff.
“We’re improving agriculture and showing a pathway to net-zero while we produce Canada’s food.”
– Claude Mindorff
Solar and the family farm
Shawn Morton has figured this out. He’s a fourth-generation farmer from Joffre, Alberta who now runs a cow-calf operation and partners in farming lands as well.
“My grandfather came to Alberta from Scotland in 1900 and homesteaded right on this site where we are right now,” says Shawn.
“This land probably 25 to 30 years ago was in cropland and then my dad was a big believer in holistic farming. He sowed it down to grass and we pastured it for the last 25 to 30 years,” he says.
Shawn now has a 48-megawatt solar farm on his land, but he wasn’t always excited about the idea.
Getting to yes. At first, “just say no”
“I was approached in about 2000 by some developers and they asked if was interested in having a solar farm on my land, of course, it’s whenever you’re approached by something and it’s a change, you always say no,” says Shawn.
He says Claude Mindorff has been great to work with and together they are hatching plan to not only continue using the land but to test several ideas and monitor the results.
To Shawn agrivoltaics simply means he continues to farm or graze the land after the solar farm is built.
“If we can continue to use it in agriculture, I think the benefit is tremendous,” he says standing between two rows of solar modules on his farm.
“So they’ve rented 300 acres from me and there’s 220 acres actually of solar panels fenced in,” he says. Shawn grazed cattle in the part of the lease outside the fence and harvested silage in the area while the solar farm was being built.
Shawn says this year they will likely hay the site and “in the future run sheep out there and that will keep the grass down.”
Mindorff is also hoping to do test sections in barley and compare it with other fields outside the solar farm.
Solar will keep “a lot of farmers on the land”
Standing between two rows of solar modules on his farm near Joffre, Alberta Shawn says “I think the benefits are tremendous. As you can see up and down these rows, we’re in the middle of May and already the grass has grown probably four inches,” says Shawn adding there was no impact on the quality of the land.
Most important to Shawn is the fact he will continue to use the land. But there are other significant benefits as well.
“I think there’s a financial benefit. I think it’ll keep a lot of farmers on the land,” he says adding “I’m able to farm full time with the financial benefit of the [solar] park.”
It’s also got Shawn feeling optimistic about succession, and keeping the farm in the family.
“I hope that my daughter will farm, or if she doesn’t choose a career in agriculture, she’ll have the benefit of being able to stay in agriculture with the revenue from the solar park.”
Music to the ears of Claude Mindorff
This is music to Calude Mindorff’s ears. He says solar can play many roles in farming. He says there are essentially three versions of agrivoltaics.
“Field agrovoltaics, where you have cereal grains “there are designs for vertical panels where you can grow tall crops like corn, grain and canola in between.”
“Then there is what we call the market garden approach,” where the solar canopies almost touch at the top or they are V-shaped and almost touch on the sides. “They provide shade and shelter for tender fruits like strawberries, bench strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, or haskaps.”
Mindorff says you can also grow leafy vegetables, such as “Any of the nightshades, potatoes, beets, tomatoes, or peppers, grow incredibly well under solar.” He says there is plenty of research going on in this area in Oregon, Arizona and other places.
“The third is what you see here [at Joffre]; Where you have single ground mount panels or single axis tracking where grazing is the primary activity underneath and then you rotate crops in every few years to reduce the site becoming root bound.”
What about agrivoltaics and buildings?
It’s also possible to convert Canada’s large greenhouse installations into co-use facilities where the roofs and the walls are, are actual solar panels,” says Mindorff.
“There’s a company called Heliene that’s doing that in Ontario.” The idea is you replace the glass with semi-transparent solar modules that “require no additional racking or support.” The company says you could replace 100% of the energy needed for the greenhouse with solar and potentially save money while you are at it.
Mindorff works with PACE Canada and they have built four solar projects in Alberta. Mindorff is also planning to run other agrivoltaics experiments at other projects.
“In Youngstown we have planted native grassland species on a dryland site of 58 acres to determine the impact of solar on dryland species,” says Mindorff.
At Claresholm where the sheep hide beneath the solar modules during the increasingly common hot summer heat domes, the only place the grass was still growing during the heat wave was beneath the solar modules.
Mindorff has a hunch the dryland native grassland species will do better as well.
Solar isn’t eating up farmland, It is farming
Mindorff says Dr. Joshua Pierce of Western University looked into how much farmland it would take to meet Canada’s current electricity demand.
He found it would take “less than 1% of the agricultural lands, under utility-scale developments such as Joffrey” to “provide Canada’s electricity,” says Mindorff.
This was confirmed in Alberta where solar was booming until the provincial government slammed the breaks on it with their big “renewables pause.” One of the reasons cited was to protect farmland.
But the province’s own Alberta Utility Commission found in a January 2024 report (see page 22) that even under the “AESO high renewable net-zero scenario” renewable energy would take up less than 1% of farmland by 2041.
Solar rarely, if ever goes on class one farmland because farmers already know the best use for that land. And the industry is already doing some pretty innovative work integrating solar with farming. But Claude Mindorff fully expects agrivoltaics will become just another way of farming in which the crops are food and energy.