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Michigan farms expanding solar following new legislation
Some Michigan farms in the process of adding solar to offset energy use are expanding production to benefit from new clean energy legislation.
Allen Bonthuis with Harvest Solar tells Brownfield farmers can now produce 110 percent of their renewable energy needs and be compensated for more of their production.
“They’ve increased the size of the Distributed Generation Program at which the utilities have to pay for the electricity you send back to the grid from 150 to 550 kilowatts, and that was probably the biggest change out of those seven bills that is really going to impact Michigan farmers,” he explains.
He says prior regulations capped renewable energy projects at 150 kilowatts which was less than 20 percent of many farms’ electrical needs.
“We’ve found over the last six weeks a lot of customers that were at that 150-kilowatt cap, they’re now redoing their entire plan,” he says. “We’re going in with a new set of plans on much bigger systems.”
Bonthuis says businesses with year-round electrical use are the best fit for solar projects like poultry, hog, and dairy farms.
I misspoke when I said that they would be using 30,000 acres, it is in fact 300,000 acres.