Solar farms are booming in the US and putting thousands of hungry sheep to work On rural Texas farmland, beneath hundreds of rows of solar panels, a troop of stocky sheep rummage through pasture, casually bumping into one another as they remain committed to a single task: chewing grass.
The proliferation of sheep on solar farms is part of a broader trend — solar grazing — that has exploded alongside the solar industry.
The booming solar industry has found an unlikely mascot in sheep as large-scale solar farms crop up across the U.S. and in the plain fields of Texas.
Agrivoltaics, a method using land for both solar energy production and agriculture, is on the rise with more than 60 solar grazing projects in the U.S., according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Putting the animals to work on solar fields also provides some help to the sheep and wool market, which has struggled in recent years.
