Following a state-wide pilot program, Dominion Energy is inviting extra sheep to its photo voltaic farm.
CHESAPEAKE, Va. — Hundreds of sheep now name Hampton Roads dwelling, after Dominion Energy employed shepherds with ‘Gray’s LAMBscaping,’ to graze on two photo voltaic farms in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach.
“They like to eat, that is for positive,” Marcus Gray mentioned.
Husband-wife duo, Marcus and Jess Gray watch over their flock because the sheep graze below photo voltaic panels on greater than 500 hectares of land.
They moved the flocks to Hampton Roads, following a profitable pilot program led by Dominion Energy to mix conventional sheep farming with a contemporary backdrop.
“When you concentrate on it – it is an ideal match for photo voltaic farms as a result of sheep and photo voltaic farms are each environmental options to their conventional counterparts,” mentioned Tim Eberly, spokesman for Dominion Energy. .
Dominion Energy is a part of a pilot program; testing methods to have a tendency 1000’s of acres of photo voltaic panel farmland throughout Virginia whereas doing so in an eco-friendly approach by utilizing flocks of sheep as a substitute of crews of apparatus.
Eberly mentioned it was so profitable, they introduced lots of extra sheep to their farms as they expanded this system.
“I do not assume the advantages of farming right here will be overstated, you are producing power and farming the land,” Gray mentioned. “It’s positively a unique operation than you are used to however there’s an enormous alternative right here.”
Approximately 17,500 households obtain electrical energy from one photo voltaic farm alone.
A flock as giant as 80-90 sheep can graze virtually two hectares of land on daily basis.
Now, the sheep on the photo voltaic farm have began giving beginning to child lambs, who’re integrating as a part of the flock.
“They present upkeep providers for the crops. They are normally our lawnmowers.”
