Electric Chickens: “Growing” The Agrivoltaic Revolution

When Dean Engelmann, Principal at Tangletown Gardens and Wise Acre Eatery, met his future business partner Scott Endres at the University of Minnesota, the two horticulture students had no idea they’d someday be contemplating raising chickens among solar panels.

But the heritage they have in common — both are “farm boys” from the get-go — combined with hard work and an eye for innovation, has guided them toward the creation of an agricultural partnership with SunShare, an otherwise non-agricultural corporation operating electricity-generating solar farm installations in several states.

This partnership (located in Plato, Minn., and known as Buffalo Sun) forms an inspiring narrative of enterprise driven by a love of the land to create a “turnkey” model of using that land not only to generate electric power for the grid but also to grow crops, raise livestock, and contribute to Engelmann and Endres’s other agriculture-based enterprises located in South Minneapolis (54^th and Nicollet): Tangletown Gardens garden center and the nearby Wise Acre Eatery, a restaurant featuring farm-fresh produce, poultry and meats.

Engelmann related that the Tangletown enterprises started just over 20 years ago with the founding of the South Minneapolis garden center and have since expanded to the operation of Wise Acre Eatery and a 142-acre “fully integrated, regenerative agricultural farm” located next to Buffalo Sun in Plato, Minn. The Buffalo Sun facility is set to assist the larger farm in providing the products sold in the garden center, as well as the produce, poultry and meats served at Wise Acre. The Plato agricultural pursuits also contribute to Tangletown’s Community Supported Agriculture program which brings subscribers fresh food. Tangletown offers a design service, too. Taken together, all of Engelmann and Endres’ enterprises employ about 100 people who share their bosses’ “passion” for the land and its prudent use in agriculture and related activities.

The “agrivoltaic” Buffalo Sun project which Tangletown and the SunShare corporation operate occupies a seemingly-slight eight acres of land. The small land area was first sought after by SunShare to lease from the land owner for use as one of the company’s signature “solar farm” installations, which allows subscribers to cut their energy bill by claiming a stake in the power that the farm’s solar panels generate. Many among the population of the small town of Plato, however, were having none of it.

According to David Bergh, Senior Development Manager at SunShare, these local conservation-minded people were “very upfront” in their objection to taking prime agricultural land out of production for use as a dedicated solar farm. That’s when Engelmann, the neighboring land-owner, got interested in the possibility of joining forces with SunShare to use the land not occupied by the solar panels units themselves to grow crops and raise livestock, thus addressing the local people’s concern that the area finds its maximal use as agricultural land along with serving to generate power (after all, you can “drive a car” between the facility’s widely spaced solar units, according to Bergh).

Engelmann’s interest in the Buffalo Sun project was cemented when he saw its innocuous perimeter fence. He enthusiastically noted, “The fence will provide protection, should we start to raise chickens [as planned]. The solar panels themselves provide shade. The fence will also provide support for tomatoes, cucumbers and, potentially, peas.”  

In other words, when Engelmann saw this fence, he didn’t see a barren piece of metal. He saw a tool for use in the ongoing challenge of bringing food from the land.

Buffalo Sun is currently under construction but is well on the way.

“We’ve already planted more than 100 apple trees,” Engelmann said, also noting that some vegetable plants have been installed and even bee-keeping is on the horizon. “It’s a bee yard, a vegetable field, and a chicken pasture, all coupled together.”

While the Plato, Minn. partnership may seem unique, it can actually serve as a model for other agrivoltaic installations nationwide, according to both Bergh and Engelmann. This is an expansion of the already innovative concept of the community solar garden.

According to SunShare promotional material, the company’s community solar garden enterprise started with a conversation founder David Amster-Olszewski had with his mother, who pointed out that not all people who use fossil fuel electricity have a coal plant in their backyard, so why should everyone who wants to use solar power have to have solar panels on their roof?

Amster-Olszewski took this common-sense observation and decided to apply it toward utilizing the Colorado Community Solar Gardens Act, which helped popularize the concept of allowing apartment dwellers or those without the facilities for installing their own solar panels to subscribe to an off-site solar generating power facility, thus lowering their electric bills and helping in the effort to develop clean electricity production technology. Bergh points out that every watt of solar energy displaces carbon monoxide which would otherwise find its way into the atmosphere via most of the more traditional means of generating power.

The company, founded in Colorado Springs and now headquartered in Denver, started creating community solar gardens in its home state but now operates five solar gardens in Minnesota with four more in development.

“And we’re expanding into other states as well,” Bergh said.

SunShare currently has more than 40 employees and, in addition to its Denver center of operations, operates a satellite office in Minneapolis.

Contrary to pundits who have questioned the viability of solar energy as an alternative to more traditional forms of generating electricity, Bergh pointed out that the land leased by SunShare for its facilities generates income for the land-owners as well as providing clean solar power which, as noted, also serves to cut subscribers’ electric bills. A win-win-win outcome.

Placing the solar panel units is a science unto itself.

“Too close together, you get shade,” Bergh said, “too far apart, you’re not using the area efficiently.”

Further, the panels on the units are designed to follow the sun, Bergh said, so every moment of daylight goes toward generating electricity.

The future of Buffalo Sun looks bright (no pun intended), but how much agricultural product can a small, mixed-use piece of land really yield?

“We do not know the answer to that question,” Engelmann said. “It’s something I’ve never done before,” he noted, while also modestly offering that his skill and experience in agricultural pursuits are considerable. “It will be a lot of trial and error.”

He concluded: “I think that if we come up with some concepts and manage it correctly, it will be far more than we can imagine!”