🔒Orange-based Avangrid puts 5,000 sheep to work at solar farms

More than 5,000 sheep are back on the job "mowing" the grass at four solar farms owned by Orange-based Avangrid in Oregon and Washington. Avangrid, the U.S. arm of Spanish energy giant Iberdrola and parent of Connecticut utility United Illuminating, said this week that it has expanded its solar grazing partnership with a fifth-generation Oregon rancher for a third spring. The flocks are chewing their way through the workday at Daybreak Solar, Bakeoven Solar and Pachwáywit Fields Solar in Oregon, along with Lund Hill Solar in Washington. What started in 2023 as a small pilot project has since grown into a full-fledged vegetation management operation, the company said, with the sheep replacing landscape mowers and reducing fire risk ahead of the dry summer months. The company said it is considering adding sheep to additional solar facilities in the region and elsewhere in its national portfolio, which spans 25 states and roughly 11 gigawatts of generating capacity. The arrangement is the latest example of agrivoltaics, the practice of pairing solar generation with agricultural use of the same land. Connecticut solar developers have been using the model for years. West Hartford-based Verogy partners with Ellington shepherd Natalie Cohen of Hillview Farm to graze sheep at sites in Enfield, East Windsor and Southington. Solar developers say the trade is a practical one. Sheep handle the tight spaces between and beneath panel arrays better than mowing equipment, and they keep the lawn at a height that won’t shade the modules. Ranchers, meanwhile, get paid pasture access in states where farmland is increasingly hard to come by. Connecticut alone lost roughly 15% of its farms and 14.8% of its farmland between 2012 and 2022, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.