Additional Benefit from Solar !

The ever decreasing costs of electricity storage is making solar farms an exciting alternative to rural farming communities and this is generating opposition to prevent the loss of prime agricultural land from contributing to the world food supply.

It seems we need a new definition of how we classify farmland when we examine this issue.  It would be a shame to see land presently worked to grow crops for harvest disappear under a mass of photo volcanic cells, but that argument does not hold up when the land in question is simply used for grazing.

A vast area of the Australian countryside is set aside for the grazing of sheep or cattle and is considered " marginal " from an agricultural point of view.  Evidence is starting to appear where a mix of solar gathering on farms that duplicate as grazing grounds for sheep and cattle actually benefit from the presence of those solar panels.

Last year Australia experienced a severe drought and one of the outcomes was a vast reduction in stock because most graziers were forced to buy feed to keep their animals from starving.  Vast herds shrunk to a nucleus of the best breeding animals and now the drought has broken it is estimated that it will take years to regain those herd numbers.

What is surprising is a report from a Dubbo farmer who has  an array of solar panels located on his fifty-five hectare farm.  During the worst of the drought his sheep continued grazing amongst the panels when surrounding farmers were buying in feed and reducing their herd sizes.   He noticed that night temperatures induced moisture to form on the solar panels and this dripped off onto the pasture below when the sun rose in the morning.  The panels were generating enough water to sustain the surrounding grass and delivering sustainability for his sheep.

There is a benefit to be gained by locating solar farms on marginal grazing land if this mix of activities can be managed.  The ideal situation would be electricity generated by solar during the day having the excess used to pump water back to elevated lakes to use hydro power to sustain supplies during rhe night when the sun is not shining, and this is the tactic that will be employed in the enlarged Snowy Mountains development.

There appears to be a strong case for combining solar farms on maginal grazing land to combine the   productive effect of leasing the land for that use with the benefit of drought protection. The right combination of land use can have a positive effect on farm finance by reducing that old drought scourge that has long affected the farming community.