The new framework for the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities’ dual-use solar pilot program drew support at a public hearing Nov. 30 from farming representatives and developers, who nevertheless urged the state to move more quickly and boldly so struggling farmers would benefit from the program sooner. 

Some of the more than 20 speakers at the two-hour hearing held by the BPU to solicit public input into the plan said the program could provide a much-needed revenue flow for the state’s farms, many of which barely get by amid rising costs and as a result allocate land solely for solar without a farming component. 

“This is critical that we get this going, because we are losing farmland left and right with a lot of the solar projects that have already been implemented,” said Teri Rhodes, a sheep farmer in Warren County who said she is “solar grazing approximately 1,000 head of sheep up and down the eastern seaboard.” She urged the BPU to make the program as simple as possible in order to make it accessible to as many farmers as possible. 

Other speakers questioned whether the state’s community solar program could be part of the dual-use program, the BPU could increase the solar capacity that it planned to award, and the program could prioritize the most commonly grown crops in New Jersey so they get the most support. 

Lyle Rawlings, co-founder of the Mid-Atlantic Solar Energy Industries Association (MSEIA) and a solar developer, said the BPU should simplify the proposal requirements for farmers wherever possible because otherwise it could discourage smaller family farms from participating in the program. 

“An agro-voltaic project is a marriage typically of a solar company and a farmer or a farming family,” he said. “The solar guys are used to handling the red tape and the complexity of the process of getting approval and have the expertise in designing the solar to work with an agricultural program. The farmers generally are not. But they’re going to have to be an integral part of putting a proposal together, because they have the expertise in farming.” 

Public comment on the straw proposal will be accepted until 5 p.m. on Dec. 13, and the BPU expects to vote on final program details in 2024. 

Promising Research

The Legislature mandated the program’s creation in the Dual-Use Solar Energy Act, which was enacted in July 2021 and required that the BPU create a dual-use solar — also known as agrivoltatics — program within six months. The BPU’s resulting program seeks to install 200 MW of generating capacity in the first three years and could be extended by 50 MW a year. Individual projects in the pilot can be no more than 10 MW in size. (See New Jersey Plans Dual-Use Solar Pilot Launch for mid-2024.) 

Once the pilot is complete, researchers will analyze data collected on issues such as the crops cultivated, crop performance, solar array performance and the environmental impact on soil, biological diversity, wildlife and other factors. Then the BPU will develop a permanent program.  

The pilot proposal comes as the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station and Rutgers University are midway through a $2 million state-funded study looking into whether crops and cows can thrive next to bifacial vertical and rotating solar panels (See NJ’s $2M Agrivoltaics Study Advances.) 

“This is an emerging technology, but the research on it so far is promising,” Ethan Schoolman, an associate professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University, said at the hearing.  

“It suggests that when you combine the yield in crops and energy, the overall revenue for the farm can be equal or greater to what it would be for just growing crops,” he said. “And we hope the research that is conducted through the pilot program will help us to better understand how strong and under what conditions we can encourage productive agriculture under dual-use solar.” 

Ethan Winter, national smart solar director for the American Farmland Trust, which works to save farmland, said the program could be an important one for New Jersey farmers. The trust estimates the state could lose 16% of its farmland in the next 15 to 20 years, “and that’s the highest percentage of any state in the country,” he said. 

“We’d be especially interested in seeing the incentives for the pilot program prioritize vegetable, melon, fruit, nursery flora-culture and strawberry operations,” he added, saying that those account for “almost 80% of the total value of New Jersey crops.”

Rawlings said he sees a conflict in two elements of the program. On one hand, he noted, program rules do not allow dual-use proposals on “prime agricultural soils and soils of statewide importance.” But the program also is seeking to work out “how do we optimize the production of crops,” he said, suggesting the project allow prime soil to be used. 

“If you have to do this in poor soil, it hampers the goal of doing real agricultural production,” he said. 

Increased MW Allocation Urged

Several speakers questioned the proposal’s requirement for a “control” area in the pilot. It requires that each pilot project create a similar area to the one with the solar panels that conducts the same farming functions but does not include the solar panels. That way, the BPU argues, the data collected from the two land plots could be compared, demonstrating the impact farming beneath the panels. 

But some farmers and developers said setting aside a significant piece of land for a control area could be too burdensome for some farmers and would dissuade some from taking part. 

Ed Wengryn, research associate for the New Jersey Farm Bureau, said the agency had concerns about the proposal if it required the control and project use the same sized piece of land.  

“As long as there’s some flexibility in the research size thing, I think we are more comfortable with the proposal,” he said.   

Lucy Bullock-Sieger, vice president of strategy for Lightstar Renewables, a Boston-based community solar developer, said when the company analyzed all their projects under the requirement that the control area and the project use equally sized pieces of land “it killed all of [their] projects,” and made them unfeasible. 

She also urged the BPU to increase the “megawatt allotments” in the proposal. Given the amount of time and effort needed to conduct a project, with permitting alone taking more than two years, the company says the award size in the projects “aren’t sufficient, given the lengthy timelines for the development of these kinds of projects.”