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Renewable Energy Standards solar_sheep

Published on January 4th, 2010 | by Susan Kraemer

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Tiny North Carolina Utility Tries "Best Practices" Solar Farming

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January 4th, 2010 by  

Here’s a charming and sustainable way to keep the grass trimmed beneath solar arrays. Sheep nibble the grass down to a manageable level.

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This relatively small North Carolina installation supplying electricity to Progress Energy is kept trim without fossil-fuels in what sustainable landscaping circles consider “best practices” for sustainability – by sheep.

It is owned by Carolina Solar Energy LLC with financing by BB&T Equipment Finance Corporation, and its electricity is sold to a local utility; Progress Energy which is mandated to buy an increasing portion of energy production from renewable energy, with a small beginning of 3% by 2012, and to reach 12% by 2021. Next Progress plans to build a 2.3 MW solar array, its sixth of small, but ever increasing in size solar projects. It will be financed, built and operated by San Francisco-based MP2 Capital.

These arrays are very far from the utility-scale solar farms such as are being proposed in the California desert. Typical utility-scale projects would be well over 100 MW, most are 250 MW, and the Military is planning a 1 GW solar farm. This is just 650 kilowatts; about what a large factory or industrial complex might put on its roof.

Why this Person County utility is taking such baby steps, I’m not sure. Perhaps it is just green-washing. But, whatever its motivation, going so slow has a side benefit. It’s made it possible for a utility and local county officials to test run the grass, and the sheep.

The beauty of this tiny installation is this unique concept – allowing grass and sheep to coexist pleasantly with the solar farm. If this works on the next solar farm the utility envisions, from there, it might lead to a wider adoption, and remedy much of the anguish of environmentalists that has led to the solar gridlock in the California desert.

It’s a great concept.

Image:Flikr user Ben

Source: Guardian

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About the Author

writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times.    Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.



  • Uncle B

    The American dollar is speeding up towards crash velocity as we speak, and soon the Chinese will pull the economic plug on America and the need for arable gardening land will rise as fast as hunger does, in turn dependent on the collapse of the corporatist Factory Farms that will close up shop in the U.S. and move their capital to the greener fields offered in the Yuan on the Beijing, Shanghai and Hang Seng stock markets! The fatted calf, the American citizen of the day, will now be on the Asian bar-B-Q so to speak! They will eat everything sight! Worms, garbage, dogs, cats, rats, grass, anything they get their hands on to satiate their immense bellies pains, anything they can put in their mouths to feed their great fat asses, huge frames, and useless big biceps! They will drink irradiated sewage, they will kill even the animals of the fields and eat them live, and a great starvation will be brought upon them in search for ROI their old God! The great fat asses, big bellies will be seen, red faced, trudging down paved roads, drinking from culverts they once drove arrogantly over, in search of blades of grass, roadkill, mice, and dog feces, anything to stop the hunger pangs of their abnormally large and unsustainable bodies. The gasoline will go to Asians, for bigger better stronger more stable and less manipulated Yuan and high quality Asian products, and Americans, the fatted calves for the 21st century will explode nuclear devices in exasperation of the situation, only hardening the hearts of the true capitalists, the Chinese, further, who will propagandize against them as lazy, slothful, over-fed, inept, greedy, over fed, unsustainable, worthless, and arrogant folk! Right now the American struggles against his corporatists for the “Upper Hand”, and looses ground daily, and is sold out to the Chinese, and other Asians who have bought the title ‘Manufacturers to the World” from the treasonous corporatists, and the title “Heavy Industry Kings” as well, and now are trying to profit from giving away America’s claim of being “Bankers to the World” by dashing the U.S. dollar and ducking in safety on Asian markets in Yuan, a safe, communist guaranteed, money with gold backing, not a fanciful hypothetical “Fiat” printing press money hardly worth the paper it is printed on if the country falters, hiccups, or even slows down from its frantic pace! These goats, a habinger of a time to come when wishfull thinking about environmentalism will become and ardenly practiced sustainability religion by the few survivors of a reality hidden from us all by the corporate propagandists for far too long. We must mend our ways, re-tune our bodies and prepare for survival without light sweet crude oil, our current EROI lever, ( Energy Return on Investment) as none on earth, save for Turkmenistan’s fields and an Afghanistan pipedream by Halliburton(Dubai) away from American ports. Without our “Oil lever” and we are vanquished. Asia Nukes up, as we speak, in light of this fact, and develops 11 new reactors this year in China alone, as well a sophisticated Electric Bullet train metwork we cannot build, yet we waste oil in gasoline form, rather than using Diesel in Euro style diesels, a full thermodynamically proven 40% more efficient, over our gasoline addiction engines, to build our reactors for survival, our Prairie Wind Corridor Power, our South Western Solar Power, our huge geothermal savior here at home! and Tidal and Wave power supplies for the day the Saudi and OPEC wishful thinking about reserves is revealed for the witchcraft it is! This article belies the date of arrival of the gasoline crisis! It is now! Americans using goats to cut lawns! Imagine!

  • Uncle B

    The American dollar is speeding up towards crash velocity as we speak, and soon the Chinese will pull the economic plug on America and the need for arable gardening land will rise as fast as hunger does, in turn dependent on the collapse of the corporatist Factory Farms that will close up shop in the U.S. and move their capital to the greener fields offered in the Yuan on the Beijing, Shanghai and Hang Seng stock markets! The fatted calf, the American citizen of the day, will now be on the Asian bar-B-Q so to speak! They will eat everything sight! Worms, garbage, dogs, cats, rats, grass, anything they get their hands on to satiate their immense bellies pains, anything they can put in their mouths to feed their great fat asses, huge frames, and useless big biceps! They will drink irradiated sewage, they will kill even the animals of the fields and eat them live, and a great starvation will be brought upon them in search for ROI their old God! The great fat asses, big bellies will be seen, red faced, trudging down paved roads, drinking from culverts they once drove arrogantly over, in search of blades of grass, roadkill, mice, and dog feces, anything to stop the hunger pangs of their abnormally large and unsustainable bodies. The gasoline will go to Asians, for bigger better stronger more stable and less manipulated Yuan and high quality Asian products, and Americans, the fatted calves for the 21st century will explode nuclear devices in exasperation of the situation, only hardening the hearts of the true capitalists, the Chinese, further, who will propagandize against them as lazy, slothful, over-fed, inept, greedy, over fed, unsustainable, worthless, and arrogant folk! Right now the American struggles against his corporatists for the “Upper Hand”, and looses ground daily, and is sold out to the Chinese, and other Asians who have bought the title ‘Manufacturers to the World” from the treasonous corporatists, and the title “Heavy Industry Kings” as well, and now are trying to profit from giving away America’s claim of being “Bankers to the World” by dashing the U.S. dollar and ducking in safety on Asian markets in Yuan, a safe, communist guaranteed, money with gold backing, not a fanciful hypothetical “Fiat” printing press money hardly worth the paper it is printed on if the country falters, hiccups, or even slows down from its frantic pace! These goats, a habinger of a time to come when wishfull thinking about environmentalism will become and ardenly practiced sustainability religion by the few survivors of a reality hidden from us all by the corporate propagandists for far too long. We must mend our ways, re-tune our bodies and prepare for survival without light sweet crude oil, our current EROI lever, ( Energy Return on Investment) as none on earth, save for Turkmenistan’s fields and an Afghanistan pipedream by Halliburton(Dubai) away from American ports. Without our “Oil lever” and we are vanquished. Asia Nukes up, as we speak, in light of this fact, and develops 11 new reactors this year in China alone, as well a sophisticated Electric Bullet train metwork we cannot build, yet we waste oil in gasoline form, rather than using Diesel in Euro style diesels, a full thermodynamically proven 40% more efficient, over our gasoline addiction engines, to build our reactors for survival, our Prairie Wind Corridor Power, our South Western Solar Power, our huge geothermal savior here at home! and Tidal and Wave power supplies for the day the Saudi and OPEC wishful thinking about reserves is revealed for the witchcraft it is! This article belies the date of arrival of the gasoline crisis! It is now! Americans using goats to cut lawns! Imagine!

  • http://www.greencollareconomy.com Casey Verdant

    Carolina Solar Energy LLC’s innovative sourcing of solar power and multi-use of solar array land for farming should be a model for other farmers looking to make a profit and other alternative energy promoters looking for ways to utilize their land.

  • http://www.greencollareconomy.com Casey Verdant

    Carolina Solar Energy LLC’s innovative sourcing of solar power and multi-use of solar array land for farming should be a model for other farmers looking to make a profit and other alternative energy promoters looking for ways to utilize their land.

  • chrisp68

    So why isn’t this array on the roof of a factory if it’s just enough to power one? Plant trees instead of letting sheep nibble at grass. You can’t plant trees on top of the factories, so put the panels there instead. Why double the land needed for industrial purposes?

    Come on people!

  • chrisp68

    So why isn’t this array on the roof of a factory if it’s just enough to power one? Plant trees instead of letting sheep nibble at grass. You can’t plant trees on top of the factories, so put the panels there instead. Why double the land needed for industrial purposes?

    Come on people!

  • JJ

    Hey when I last lived in England, our next door neighbor had several sheep grazing his garden, I even recall you could borrow them since most people only had push mowers (that is so green isn’t it). He was such a character. His garden looked a lot like the one that Jaycee Dugard was hidden in. We never quite figured out what he was up to, probably just growing veggies in his private allotment, pretty common over there.

    BTW don’t wish too hard for sheep, they make a lot of noise at night time, you may actually have to count them.

    I wonder what the true energy costs are for growing my own veggies and raising sheep. I know, I can just look that up in chapter 13 of my handy dandy and free “Sustainable Energy — without the hot air” by David Mackay.

  • JJ

    Hey when I last lived in England, our next door neighbor had several sheep grazing his garden, I even recall you could borrow them since most people only had push mowers (that is so green isn’t it). He was such a character. His garden looked a lot like the one that Jaycee Dugard was hidden in. We never quite figured out what he was up to, probably just growing veggies in his private allotment, pretty common over there.

    BTW don’t wish too hard for sheep, they make a lot of noise at night time, you may actually have to count them.

    I wonder what the true energy costs are for growing my own veggies and raising sheep. I know, I can just look that up in chapter 13 of my handy dandy and free “Sustainable Energy — without the hot air” by David Mackay.

  • http://glueandglitter.com/main Becky

    This is brilliant! I wonder if the holdup is a money thing?

  • http://glueandglitter.com/main Becky

    This is brilliant! I wonder if the holdup is a money thing?

  • sh

    I think everyone everywhere should do this! So much better than stinky lawnmowers and blowers. What a wonderful example this company is setting!

  • sh

    I think everyone everywhere should do this! So much better than stinky lawnmowers and blowers. What a wonderful example this company is setting!

  • MD

    I think its a great idea… we should be doing this near where I live, there is a lot of open area that is grazed by cattle, it is mainly on fairly steep hills that cannot be used for grain farming. If you use google maps and look for hwy 128/193 along the Snake river WA/ID, anyone can see the area faces the sun and can be accessed as there are the highways below. Transmission is there too if the arrays stretched far enough, as the Lower Granite Hydro Dam is there too.

  • MD

    I think its a great idea… we should be doing this near where I live, there is a lot of open area that is grazed by cattle, it is mainly on fairly steep hills that cannot be used for grain farming. If you use google maps and look for hwy 128/193 along the Snake river WA/ID, anyone can see the area faces the sun and can be accessed as there are the highways below. Transmission is there too if the arrays stretched far enough, as the Lower Granite Hydro Dam is there too.

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