"16g Improving Dual-Use Farming with TrackerSleds"

Today’s agricultural solar systems are static, costly, sacrifice energy yield, and are specialized for certain crops, rendering them useless for farms with rotating crops or located in other climate zones. Additionally, few Rural Electric Member Cooperatives, which serve most agricultural communities, generate solar power themselves because deploying agricultural solar systems is too complicated. A novel modular solar tracking platform will solve these problems, allowing Rural Electric Member Coopera- tives to generate power themselves while reducing dual-use farming costs and development time. Crews will assemble modular platforms from 16 prefabricated pieces and tow them to fields where they will link together to generate clean energy. With pairs of single axis trackers and bifacial modules improving energy yield, the platforms will deploy on untilled polyculture cover crops fields instead of cash crop fields. These fields will demonstrate cost-effective ways of restoring the soil’s natural fertility. With generous leases offered by the Rural Electric Member Cooperatives, farmers and ranchers can ground-truth these practices on adjacent cash crop fields to improve profitability while drawing down carbon, mitigating climate change. Rural Electric Member Cooperatives, which serve 56% of the United States’ land area, will use the platforms to generate clean energy - without specialized skill. Instead of competing with agriculture, the Cooperatives will catalyze its profitability by using dual-use fields to demonstrate how nature can increase fertility without agrochemicals and tilling. Farmers and ranchers who extrapolate these practices to cash crop fields can mon- etize newly sequestered carbon with carbon credits, while the enriched soil improves rainwater infiltration, resiliency, and nutrition. During Phase I, we will develop the bilaterally symmetrical plug-n-play platforms that crews will tow into position and link together. Each 11.2 kilowatt solar tracker platform will include a pair of single-axis solar trackers supported above pontoons skis ballasted with water. Since the modular platforms are agnostic to to- pography and underground conditions, Cooperatives can offer leases to landowners located anywhere along medium-voltage corridors. The modular platform will obviate land surveys, geotechnical testing, precision pile driving, and lengthy interconnection queues that frustrate state-of-the-art solar farms.