After several years with the N.C. State Highway Patrol, Michael Dalton traded in his patrol car for a tractor and 160 acres of rolling farmland in Mocksville, N.C.
“My dad farmed,” he said, “so we walked this together. He agreed it was a prime location … the privacy, the availability of land and the way it scopes around the exterior perimeter.”
Dalton uses the land, which is owned by his father-in-law, to produce and crop hay. Each spring, the hay is treated, cut, cured and then assembled into round bales and sold to local farmers to feed livestock.
What land they don’t need for hay – about 110 acres – is leased by Duke Energy as part of its mission to deliver increasingly clean energy to customers.
At 15.4 megawatts (MW), Duke Energy’s Mocksville Solar Facility generates enough carbon-free electricity to power, on average, about 3,000 homes a year.
For farmers, it’s a business opportunity.
“My father-in-law still owns the land,” Dalton said, “and it makes sense economically. There are a lot of factors that we as farmers can’t control, Mother Nature being the biggest adversary, so the additional income helps make it work.”
The partnership was initiated by a third-party developer, which identified the land as a good site for a solar facility. Once they secured a lease, Duke Energy acquired the site, said Director of Renewable Development Justin LaRoche, to expand the company's renewable energy generation capacity.
“As Duke Energy adds more renewables to its grid, something we’re doing at an ambitious pace," LaRoche said, "partnerships with landowners and farmers are essential in deploying the amount of new solar that’s needed.”
In the Carolinas, Duke Energy operates more than 45 solar facilities and has more than 4,600 MW of solar power connected to its energy grid. That could power the annual usage of nearly 1 million homes and businesses.
Source: csrwire.com
Photo Credit: Duke Energy
Categories: Kentucky, Energy