 Great. Welcome everybody to the June 9th 2023 meeting of the town of Amherst solar bylaw working group. Hope everybody's doing well staying healthy in this polluted air wherever you may be. And I'm really excited to have a meeting today. That's more information and educational based with our guests who I'll introduce in a moment. To speak to us particularly about solar and agriculture and particularly dual use solar or agrivoltaics. Also referred to in state regulations as agricultural solar tariff generation units. And so what we'll do with the agenda today is start and dedicate the bulk of the meeting to the three speakers who will go in order and have some Q&A I'll discuss that in a moment. And then leave the remainder of the agenda. So the profound three stuff that we time time permitting to look at the minutes from last time review those and so forth and do some updates. As you do know, we may not know both Stephanie. And Chris Christine from the town are not able to be with us today because of other other commitments. So, any thoughts or questions from the committee members before we dive into the agenda. Okay, so let me. Sorry, just, I thought I had up my great. Okay, so we have a great opportunity to speak with three leaders in the area of agrivoltaics. And we'll go in the following order. Ethan winter is the national smart, which is not an acronym in this case, I don't think national smart solar director. He's not only the solar director but he's smart and direct smartly with with the American farmland trust. The American farmland trust has been is a national organization, Ethan can tell us more that is really all about protecting preserving and viability of farms around the country, but also AFT is is has also taken a fairly substantial role in agrivoltaics as they relate to farms. And so Ethan will give us a sort of broader perspective about farms, agrivoltaics more generally nationally, and the work of AFT and perspectives, and just a heads up. He's time limited so we'll go with his presentation then have some q amp a for Ethan, and then dismiss him as he needs, and then we'll move on to Jake Marley. Jake Marley is also a prominent and key player in agrivoltaics in Massachusetts and happens to come from our hometown of Amherst. One of the very early companies in agrivoltaics was Hyperion systems in Amherst. And Jake's been leading that group for a number of years now, and has particular perspectives on working on developing relatively smaller scale. Like projects integration with and perspective from the farmers that he works with in the local area, and, and how projects are are being projects that he's working with are being developed. So he'll give us sort of that perspective from the developer from the from a developer and someone who works closely with landowners and farmers as well. Lastly is Jerry Polano. Jerry Polano is the alternative energy specialist at the Massachusetts Department of agricultural resources. Jerry is the go to person on with regard to the rules and regulations in Massachusetts with regard to agrivoltaics. And as it pertains, and as a part of the Massachusetts solar program called smart solar Massachusetts renewable target, I think, and Jerry's been front and center working closely. So keep in mind the smart program is added do we are Department of energy resources, but Jerry works very closely with with do we are on on issues and the rules and regulations and the guidelines and the updates to the guidelines and so forth, with regard to specifically the portion of the regulation that deals with agricultural solar tariff generation units or agrivoltaics. So Jerry has a wealth of information on on how agrivoltaics are are are regulated in terms of their eligibility and design in Massachusetts. I give that little background before we turn over first to Ethan. We will hear from the speakers and then and then have some q amp a with the speakers each each person has about half an hour including the q amp a so 20 minutes or so in 10 minutes, or however we like to break it out. I with that keep in mind the different perspectives and specialties of the of the different guests speakers we have today. So hold your questions to the appropriate speaker don't start battering Ethan with all details about the rules for regulations because that's Jerry, for example. So, with that. Let me know if there's any any questions before we get going. And let me also. Great, Ethan, you're getting that set up. We do have now nine, nine people from the in the attendee list. We will certainly and want to open up once we open up for discussion and q amp a not only hear from the from the working group but also from the public participants if there are any questions and so forth. And let me just ask for the, for the guests for the for the guest speakers. Would it be okay to share your slides with us and then have them posted as part of the record of the meeting. Okay, great. And I know I have Jerry's as well and is that okay with you to Jake. Yes, yeah, I'll share them after the meeting. Awesome. Awesome. Okay, very good. Okay, so let's turn it over to Ethan and again, just a big thank you first to all of our speakers for spending the time with us on this important issue as we sort of start to grapple with the nitty gritty of the zoning rules that we might want to put will put together as it pertains to farming agriculture and farming solar solar and farming in the town of Amherst. So Ethan, thank you and over to you and I will do my best to make sure we're preserving lots of time for Jake and Jerry. And I want to just first of all acknowledge Duane's leadership with the clean energy extension and research on the use it's been really important in moving a national dialogue and that's something I'm going to speak to in the next 15 minutes or so so buckle up. I've got a lot to cover. I am going to provide some high level framing around American Farmland Trust and how and why we're engaging in this space. A few caveats. This is a really dynamic area. We're learning a lot of technologies and markets are evolving rapidly. And there are complex questions about how solar and agricultural use can interact. And we'll just sort of put this idea in your ear that towns like Amherst really can lead by example by providing space for experimentation and innovation with solid guardrails. Hopefully that's where you all can land. So I'm going to just very briefly talk about three big elephants in the room, not to belabor this too much but we've all been choking on smoke from Canada the last few days. Bottom line here is that the northeast is really starting to see significant climate impacts. The bottom sort of line on that is we have to decarbonize our grid. We have to be rapidly scaling up electrification. And that's going to be a land intensive endeavor. There's really no way around that. And that's why it's so important for municipalities like Amherst, farmers, land trusts and others to be engaging with the solar sector and pushing for creativity and avoiding binary conversations about solar not on farmland or just thinking black and white. This is a highly nuanced area and we've got to get going. The second elephant obviously for AFT is farmland looks writ large, both across the country and in New England specifically and Massachusetts has had one of the highest rates on a percentage basis of agricultural land conversion over the last 20 years. AFT's farms under threat report if you're not familiar with that. It's a link that I can share in the chat provides a very detailed analysis of state and regional trends as it relates to farmland conversion to a low density development as well as urban development. So we're understanding that solar is yet another variable potentially in that farmland loss conversation. And the third elephant here is this energy transition that not only is happening but must happen. And folks like Jake are on the front lines and thinking about the business models that are going to work for agricultural dual use, but I think it's just really helpful to put your efforts and your work as a committee into context. And we are at the very beginning of a massive energy transition, not only in the US but globally. And solar is now the lowest cost source new power generation, cheaper than wind, cheaper than natural gas. So this is well underway. Folks are often talking about solar on rooftops. Absolutely we agree that that should be prioritized. But even after you optimize for rooftops, barns and parking lots, you're still looking at probably 80% of the solar going forward being utility scale and ground mounted online. So we're aware of that we're looking at that sort of, you know, very soberly and thinking about how do we avoid the most significant impacts to agricultural productivity, knowing that the land is going to be a key part of this pathway. AFT's been around for 40 years. Some of you may be very familiar with AFT we have a well established New England program. I'm based in the Hudson Valley and Saratoga Springs. And just to highlight that we have three pillars in our climate work. First is acknowledging that protecting agricultural land is a key part of our climate solution. And we are prioritizing the most productive, versatile and resilient farmland in that work, and really making sure we have intelligent development of all forms. Secondly, promoting and accelerating regenerative climate smart agricultural practices is critical. And that's something that's happened to good effect in England, and is a real focus for our, my colleagues work in the region. Both of those do relate to solar. We do think that having a national regional platform for smart solar makes a lot of sense for an organization that is focused on farmland protection, farm viability and smart practices. I'm going to talk a little bit about that climate, or smart solar platform. We're working quite a lot to engage the solar industry directly with agricultural interests, researchers and rural communities to make sure that they're full partners in this energy transition. We know that getting this right means that we can accelerate the deployment of clean energy without displacing agriculture on our best farmland. We all eat and we're all going to need a lot more electricity from clean sources like solar. Over the last five years and really starting with a work in New England, we've developed four pillars of our smart solar program. These are our four principles. Just briefly to highlight our first principle is to prioritize solar development on buildings and in the on land that is not well suited for agriculture. So, you know, that's our first position. Secondly, highlighting the need to safeguard soils during solar development and in decommissioning so that land can be returned to productive use and ideally can be productive during the life of the project. And that relates to Agrivoltaics, our third principle. This is a rapidly growing area. There's been an explosion of interest in Agrivoltaics. And again, Massachusetts gets credit for being the first state program to have an incentive and we'll talk a little bit more about what's happening elsewhere. And finally, looking at all of this work through a lens of farm viability. For AFT that's really important, understanding that if farms aren't able to be viable financially, they're not going to stay in farming and you're going to lose that land. So, how can solar really be integrated into diversification, land and farm owner transition and succession planning, and really part of our future. Because we know that solar is going to be a key part of our energy transition. This is, as I said, an exploding area at the local and state level as well as the federal just about a week ago, the first bill in the Senate to be focused on Agrivoltaics was introduced by a bipartisan couple of senators, one from the Senate Ag committee and one on the Senate Energy Committee. So we think this is pretty notable. The bill would provide $75 million over five years for research and development. And that's not a lot of money to the federal budget but it's a meaningful signal that there really is bipartisan interest in Agrivoltaics and we've been working quite energetically with USDA and the Department of Energy to expand this as much as we can. One of the elements of this bill will be to provide a federal definition from USDA for Agrivoltaics that could be grounding for other legislation and other programs. So stay tuned there. At the local level, in our farms under threat before we talk about how local governments can stem the tide on farmland. And smart solar is a key part of that set of recommendations and specifically exactly what you're doing as a local group thinking about how you develop bylaws and permitting pathways for smart solar. And again, not just Agrivoltaics but thinking about Agrivoltaics is being a key part to farm viability and ensuring best practices for soil in that work. Many of you probably know this better than I do so I just wanted to provide a little bit of a sketch on solar in the Commonwealth. Actually it's interesting that Massachusetts was one of the leading states in solar several years ago and it has slipped quite a bit nationally, partly because other states with a bigger land base have accelerated their solar deployment. It's also true that solar is hard to develop in Massachusetts and Jake tell that story, particularly when you're trying to do agricultural compatible solar. So we've seen in Massachusetts, an increase in community solar this green on the chart here. A decline in commercial solar these are projects paired with demand local businesses for example residential solar has remained pretty flat, which is interesting suggests some barriers to how solar has been deployed on reef tops. And you are starting to see the beginning of some larger utility scale projects. And a lot of the states that I'm working in, in my national role for AFT this graph looks quite different. Graph of Maine looks like a hockey stick. Texas looks like a hockey stick states like Illinois. So, you've had some ups and downs in Massachusetts, and we would love to see Agrivoltaics be a key part of Massachusetts moving forward. Particularly in that green area of the solar. There's a lot of potential there. I'll also mention that beginning with Massachusetts program several years ago, which Dwayne mentioned, there's been a flourishing of other initiatives around the country. New Jersey is about to unveil a 200 megawatt pilot program for dual use, which will be substantially larger than the Massachusetts program. Colorado last month approved research and development funding. First time that's happened in the Western US. Illinois has an incentive that's now part of their procurement program. And we're tracking legislation in Maine and California and other states to support Agrivoltaics. So this concept really is gaining traction. It's also true that how this applies at the local levels is really going to have a lot in terms of how well Agrivoltaics takes hold and who's involved. Agrivoltaics could look differently depending on how you're applying this, and I do want to spend a few minutes on this. Just visualizing that it's not one thing. It may be a whole variety of technologies and configurations that you enable with the Bible. And I think that's an important lesson from Massachusetts and the early ASTU program is thinking about how you're designing for outcomes as well as for technical specifications that meet certain standards. But we're seeing examples of this around the country, the shoot using regenerative grazing practices, specialty crops, even poultry. The picture in the lower right is actually from Grafton, Massachusetts, and that's the first large scale Agrivoltaics project to be improved in the Commonwealth. And we're hopeful that there will be quite a few more to come. I think as the working group is thinking about the right knobs and levers to use in the bylaws. Think about how you're envisioning trade-offs between Agrivoltaic or agricultural production, energy production, and the mix of the two. There's quite a lot of research happening right now. This is a slide from a University of Illinois project funded by the USDA. And they're looking at some large scale commodity crops. And the idea again is finding ways to optimize for continued crop production, water conservation, and as well as meeting certain thresholds for energy generation. And it's all about understanding that there's a spectrum of approaches that you can take. The National Renewable Energy Lab has done quite a bit of work in this area. And we've been partnering with NREL to think about different models for application here on the ground. And again, this is something you could think about in your bylaws in terms of the range of applications that you would like to see in Amherst and in other municipalities. Either encouraging agricultural use within traditional solar arrays or encouraging alternative configuration and probably some combination of the two. As you move from conventional systems to elevated solar, you do encounter increased costs. So that's something to think about if you're having developers and farmers really need a very high bar in terms of their design configurations. There's a cost and that can really slow down deployment. So you're trying to find the right balance between cost and intensity of your co-utilization. NREL, again, has done quite a bit of work on this and I would just highlight this is one example of how they're modeling a framework along a spectrum. And again, your bylaws could encourage a spectrum of approaches from more energy-focused designs to more farmer-focused. And in that sense, create a sandbox for landowners, farmers, and solar developers to work together to find the most optimal outcome based on that site and what you're trying to achieve overall. But again, it's not a one-size-fits-all approach, ideally, and that's a key message I want to share. In terms of some guidance for you all, of course, there's the need to continue to encourage projects that qualify for the incentive. This is the Agricultural Solar Tariff Generation Unit, aka the Dual Use Incentive in Massachusetts, and Jerry can speak to how that's going. Towns should certainly be encouraging that. Projects that qualify for that incentive now are permitted by right in the state and consistent with Chapter 61. That's sort of, I would say, a first position, but you also have an opportunity to encourage flexible pathways for projects that may not meet the state qualifying requirements or criteria. And you can decide what those guardrails ought to be for projects that might be lower than the state's current requirements. If you have different shading elements, maybe you have sheep, and things that may just not quite qualify for the incentive, but could still be agricultural in nature. But, you know, to that point, you're thinking about how you harmonize what you decide is agrivoltaics with other agricultural infrastructure. With the premise that true agrivoltaics is a form of agriculture that's integrating solar, and that's, again, trying to minimize the zoning barriers that you might otherwise have. Certainly you can talk about in your bylaws, strong soil health standards and baseline assessments so that when projects are built, you have a good idea what that soil health is at the beginning of the project before construction. And then you have a baseline for decommissioning and making sure you have strong decommissioning standards. Lastly, one thing I'll mention is you also have the opportunity to encourage partnerships with these projects, whether it's with local CSAs or schools. We're seeing quite a lot of public interest in these agrivoltaic projects and that's something that you could build into your zoning that you're looking for projects that have demonstrated value added partnerships. I'll just close with some resources here. There's a lot more that I could share, but these are a few that I would point to the working group. AFT has a smart solar landing pad for a lot of resources, including some of our new England material. The National Renewable Energy Lab has developed several useful guides, including last year, a resource on success factors for agrivoltaics. So if some of you are really interested in diving in on that and the Massachusetts experience is well documented in that report. There's also a national clearinghouse known as the Agri-Solar Clearinghouse that's hosted by the National Center for Corporate Technologies and it has case studies. There's a new policy guide that may be useful and a lot of other literature that could help inform where you want to go with this. And lastly, I just want to acknowledge my colleague Jim Hefner, our New England Regional Director, who can be a resource to you all in the future. I'm happy to do that. We can't necessarily be super involved at the municipal level all the time, but really pleased to have this conversation with you all today. Really recognizing Duane's contribution to this work in a broader way. I know it's covered a lot of ground there, so I'm going to stop when I share it with you and I have a question. Yeah, that was excellent. Ethan, really helpful setting this conversation up at the national level and as it applies to Massachusetts as well. I guess I'll start with the first question then open it up. And that is just looking at from your, the viewpoint of AFT across the country. I don't have any. I know it probably has lots of different answers and so forth but in terms of the, the hypothesis that this, the agrivoltaics has been helpful for farm viability and maintaining, helping to maintain farm in farmland and farming. Is it too early or do you have sort of some some sense of at a national level of how that's going in terms of whether this approach has been helpful in maintaining farm viability. I would say that there's a great deal of interest in making sure that it is going to work, because a lot of farmers are having a pretty stark choice right now. Whether they stay in business or not. And climate impacts are creating a lot of stress. So, we look to Europe, interestingly, and Asia for a number of national examples where agrivoltaics has been built into national policy in a much deeper way than has occurred so far in the US. For example, just in the last couple of years, Italy, France and Germany have instituted essentially national programs for agrivoltaics. And they're making sure that those are quite regular standards in terms of what agrivoltaics needs. In other words, it's not a pseudo co location. It's making sure that you've got a significant agricultural production along with the energy generation, so that ag production can continue. We are seeing a great deal of interest in this in the West where water scarcity is a big driver. So you've got land that's losing water availability, for example, in California, and there's some real interest in seeing how agrivoltaics can be both a farm viability and a water saving strategy. So I would say there's, there's a lot of potential. One of the bottlenecks I see is simply in farmer training and the workforce development area here. We're really going to scale as with other practices that have been encouraged for the farming community. We're going to need technical assistance. We're going to need time to get this socialized with farmers. And that's a key area that folks are picking up on. Really leaning into this and we're partnering with Rutgers University and their agrivoltaics program with a project that's been funded by DOE to develop a farmer training program. That was in that last round of a DOE funding for agrivoltaics. So we're going to learn a lot in that farmer training curriculum. As that DOE use pilot program gets underway, because we've identified both a need to train farmers and help them think about operational transition, as well as thinking about pathways for underserved farmers and producers to be partners, including urban farmers. So we're really excited about what we're going to learn in that. And I would say that, you know, there's a lot to learn. And again, we've got an opportunity in Townsend Amherst to bring in some learning. Great. Thanks. Thanks, Ethan. Let me open up to questions from the working group here. And I think in order was Dan, Janet, and then Jack. So Dan. Hi, Ethan. Thanks for your presentation. I'm curious, are you aware of any potential permanent impacts to soil health that can occur when implementing agrivoltaics? That would be impacts that we'll see after completing this decommissioning. Well, it's definitely too early to see anything that's been decommissioned. In any area, Jake can speak to this in the project design is soil compaction. Making sure that, you know, as you're putting these projects in, you're thinking carefully about, you know, how much you're compacting the soil and where you're doing that so that you don't have to mitigate a lot of that later. And that's, that's just being intentional and the equipment that you use and where you're using it. I would say that that's probably the most sort of first order thing to be thinking about in terms of legacy impacts. But it's certainly something you can manage. Okay, thanks. Yeah, thanks. Good. Janet. Hi. I have a quick question before my real question. So when you said it was too early to tell is that because there aren't examples of decommissioning. I don't think there are too many projects that have been decommissioned in the US that I'm aware of. Most of the solar that's been built has been built in the last five years. Okay, well, my, my question is, is the mass smart rules require on dual use that all farmland that's covered with dual use is maintained in productive agriculture, not just in between the rows. But the solar arrays I've seen around in Hadley and Amherst. I don't mean none of that land, it's all farmland and none of it is an agricultural production. So my question is, you know, are there examples where that that rule is met in Massachusetts, and then also, what's the best type of solar array to say all the land is being used with the solar array on it. Is there some like it looked like the solar that once straight up gave you the best potential for that but are there certain like types of arrays that really maximize the agricultural production. And just before you think goes, I think Jake and Jerry will cover some of this as well. Absolutely. Yeah, I definitely want to defer to Jake and Jerry on their experience. I'm aware of several projects in in your area that have active rotational super raising occurring there with local producers who are growing their grazing practices and that means growing their herd and as far as they're concerned from what I hear. It's a pretty successful venture, and they're cheaper. So it may not look, it may look different than it did before, but there is agricultural activity happening in that sense. And Jerry can speak more to some of the specific projects and qualify for the state incentive. That's a subset of the overall projects and my understanding is there's only been about Jerry how many about a dozen projects that have been approved and put in the production across the state so far so. But there's more on it. So are there any examples of vegetable growing that maximize that use all the land for farming and still have solar in nationality or here. Yes, there are some examples you could look at one kind of fun example is jack solar garden in Colorado, if you're looking for something outside of Massachusetts. That's actually a fairly conventional project that their intro cropping. And it's, it's one of the examples of a family owned farm that almost certainly would have been turned into housing or commercial development in Boulder County. So we're not for the solar and they're growing food for the CSA in between those there so that's a, that's a neat example the graft and solar project that I mentioned earlier, has both a vegetable cropping array as well as a small categories. array. So there are two different systems there that they're testing in the University of Massachusetts is doing research. Yeah, and Jake, Jake and talk about some projects he's working on. Yeah. Great, Jack. Yes. I just. So are how, to what extent do you have experience with, you know, the permitting process that you've observed for various, you know, sites within Massachusetts that are, you know, the combination of agricultural and solar and just wondering what the downside that you have is in terms of, you know, not necessarily NIMBY is and but something along those lines where we're taking something away versus adding. Yeah. I have another question too. Yeah, I think Jake speak very well to that. You know, prior to my work at AFT I did some community solar development for three years and primarily in New York with some of Massachusetts. There is a lot of reaction to solar out there. There has been some research showing that projects that have a bonafide agrivoltaic or agricultural component are seen as more socially beneficial and have more support. That needs to be communicated because these land areas are going to look different than they did before when they're solar and there's sometimes always some kind of baseline reaction to that. But when farmers themselves are saying this is how we're going to keep the land in the family, we're actually maintaining access or we're creating access to tenant farmers who otherwise would be displaced. That's a powerful message. And that's why there's so much interest in this across the country is, you know, as a way to keep farmers engaged and that means, you know, doing that in a legitimate way and communicating that to others who might just be seeing solar and not knowing that there's activity happening with the system. Great. Let's we've discovered or Dwayne has brought up that that sometimes the powers used, you know, on the property and then excess, you know, be going back to the grid. Dwayne, you were going to say something. I'm sorry. Sorry, I was just going to move on to Martha, but. Okay. All right. Because I want to make sure we're giving. Jake and Jerry, but these are good questions that will apply to the others as well. So the other question I have is that we, the town, the water supply, protection committee, excuse me, group committee. I'm not sure for whatever designate, but we did a study with regard to the water resource impact of solar arrays. And we, you know, really didn't come up with much and I'm just warning from your experience. For me, you know, a transition to a combination agricultural solar from from a straight agricultural there as long as you know the appropriate erosion and sediment controls are in place. I really can't come up with much in terms of how it negatively impacts. You know, the water budget or water quality. And I'm just wondering in your experience if you have seen any projects that. You know, degrade either of those two, you know, the water quality or water quantity. Yeah, in the West, if they're using a lot of water to clean the panels, because they're getting soil from dust. That could be a factor. But by and large, what we're hearing Jack is that a solar provides micro climates that actually increases water, soil water retention on the ground. And that's why there seems to be quite a bit of interest in solar design, you know, paired with certain crops to optimize for a soil water retention under the panels. So the idea is that it actually be a water conservation strategy. But it's a good question. This wasn't exactly what you asked, but if you are going to have agrovoltaic systems, you want to make sure that you have water within the facility area for irrigation if that's what you need. Or for supporting livestock. And that's certainly something that, again, needs to be built into the site plan at the beginning. So you don't have sheep running out of water, or the inability to irrigate if that's what you're looking for. Thank you. Thanks Ethan. Okay, one more question from the committee, Martha, and then open it up to attendees. Yeah. Well, first, you showed you showed the map of land use and agrovoltaics and different states. Well, Massachusetts has only 14% of its land area in either propland or grassland. So it's a small percent, much of it concentrated here the best, most prime soils are in the Connecticut River Valley here and so on. So it's really important that we preserve the prime farmland as, you know, viable farmland, and here in Amherst of access to locally grown food is really important you know we have a farmer's market that supports the local economy etc etc So the focus is on raising food crops vegetables there orchards and and and so on so the concern would be whether if you convert, you know the vegetable crops and the local food crops to what you mentioned oh sheep farming is not really appropriate for Amherst just to support dual use solar panels it's got to be something that preserves the current food crop use for our local economy and our local health safety and welfare and so on you know we all use that example of sheep farming but I would strongly say that's not an appropriate alternative to be talking about for agrovoltaics locally in this region. So, thank you, and thanks for your presentation. Yeah, it comes up a lot and in terms of, you know, is that grazing on solar and adequate alternative. I think I'll stay silent on that for now and move on to Jay, but it's a great question. Great thing. Thanks Ethan before you go let me just, I'm going to open it up to the attendees, but with a caveat that we are short on time, and only questions that you might have that particularly pertain to Ethan, AFT, national scope. We have much more to cover at the local level. I've got a little more time going on some things to want to make sure I'm supporting the next presentation yourself. Thank you. Great. All right. If there are any questions, do raise your hand as attendees. But otherwise seeing none I will move on to Jake. And so thank you Jake for being here and and you're sharing your screen. Great. Okay. All right so Jake Marley everybody thank you. You can all hear me and see my screen. Is that correct? Sounds good. Yeah, all good. Great. I am Jake Marley. I am here representing Hyperion systems. Thank you Dwayne and the working group for the opportunity to talk today and to the other presenters Ethan and Jerry. I'm sure that there's a lot of overlap I know that there is, of course with having just heard and watched Ethan's presentation. So I'll touch on a lot of those themes. Hyperion is a solar project developer, really focused at this point just on agrivoltaics dual use solar. So what we're seeing here in this picture is an array built by Hyperion systems designed by Hyperion systems built in 2010 so quite a while ago at this point. This project was a public sector private sector collaboration with the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr Steve Herbert who was an agronomist at the university was integral in this project. He can be seen here in this picture actually. This project was born out of the idea of our founders kind of mantra of food first then energy. We all need food we all need energy. If we want to continue living the way we do in the 21st century. Stephen Rell has been a big supporter of this project and some of the research that Stephen has done and Hyperion systems. Stephen is focused on the agronomy aspects. Hyperion systems created a financial tool that compared three different baselines for farming one scenario keeping the land in agriculture production scenario to putting it into just traditional solar. Maximum ground coverage ratio maximizing that energy output and then scenario three of this dual use concept so that that inspire 1.0 was from 2016 to 2018 inspire stands for innovative solar practices integrated with rural economies and ecosystems. I know it's a program or project I know it's a mouthful that project is in its third three year round. Some aspects about this project or it's fixed tilt system so it's facing one direction and it's fixed in that it's not quite self facing and that has to do with the characteristics. This was really a pilot project not maximized output of energy. This is about five feet to leading edge height and Jerry will touch on this as well and in terms of the smart program standards but this array. Down this end is about five feet to leading edge height and then there's some natural insulation slope to the site. And it's about seven feet at this end. Another project that was innovative at the time is that did not involve any concrete. These these eight inch schedule 40 steel posts were driven with a tractor. So standard farming equipment and slide three I'll touch on kind of more up to date construction practices for these dual use systems. The crops shown here have been consistent for about seven years so the first from 2010 through 2015. There were cattle grazing and Stephen looked at Dr Herbert looked at some of the grass growth the hey growth. But there were also cattle grazing you might have seen pictures of that and the project sustained even with large cattle scratching up against the posts using the shade during the warm summer months from 2016 until today. They're doing crop trials up there. There have been four consistent crops kale broccoli Swiss shard and green bell peppers. And those have been grown to very levels of success really weather dependent, based on the conditions of that growing season. For example, 2016 2020 2022 when we had severe droughts level three droughts out of four here in Western Mass, some of these variable group crops did better than the control group. The variable group is the partially shaded areas compared to the control group which is the full sunlight. One thing that I want to highlight because I'll reference back to it later slide is these crops here, which are grown underneath the modules, and directly underneath and directly behind. So I'll reference that on slide four. I'll brief through this one but some assumptions that I'm sure you are all aware of but I think are worth reiterating and Ethan touched on this interconnection capacity dictates all commercial solar development. If there's not capacity on the grid nearby the local grid projects cannot go forward. And that's really also driven by substation capacity. So the farmers has a few different substation so therefore not all farms are suitable for solar existing infrastructure is critical. So, farms might have single phase power out front and I know that this working group is focused on projects of 250 kw and above a project of that scale and larger will not be able to tie into single phase line so inherently, all farms are suitable for this commercial solar development. And as the town is considering locations for these projects I know that there are several farms in town that have medium voltage three phase power high voltage power. So transmission transmission lines existing on on the farm. And so I think that that's kind of important as we consider and wait the different areas to deploy commercial solar. So this is really an opportunity cost, which is an economic term but it's the value or it's the trade off value essentially, and then touching on APR and Jerry will get into this as well but a basic assumption about the APR program farms must be five acres and larger in order to even participate in in APR. So this is a project in Hadley this was taken yesterday. This is a commercial array that Hyperion is developing. And the modules will be finished later today. So those will go in this is a 445 kw DC 375 kw AC systems on project it's a some design aspects about it it's a single phase. Excuse me, it's a single axis tracker project so these modules will tilt throughout the day. These rows are north to south oriented, and they will track the sun, starting in the east throughout the day to the west. This is much more efficient than that fixed tilt system that I showed in the first slide about. I don't want to offer metrics but I think there are some available online and some of the working group I'm sure more familiar with that. This project is with Joseph Kowski farm. He is a farmer in North Hadley owns and operates over 400 acres here in the valley, some of which is in Amherst. This project applied for and was awarded the ASTG you the agricultural adder within the smart program. We did not apply for a waiver Jerry will get into some of those details I'm sure, but essentially, we met the criteria without applying for a waiver for the program it's 10 feet to module horizontal. So you can this right here is 10 feet off the ground in all areas it's 10 feet taken out the tape measure and I done most of the modules it's it's consistently above that in all areas. And again single axis tracker post driven no concrete involved other than where the inverter pad will be in the northwest corner. These soils so Joe owns and operates 400. These are some of his more marginal soils but it would still be and on the map it meets the prime farmland soils. The reason we selected the middle and that's one of the reasons we selected this field. The middle of the field this is a bit of a no these soils over here are much more productive. Joe has been active on these fields for their 24 years I think. He knows in just deeply that over on the Western boundary he regularly plants different crops there because they're not as suitable or the crop areas and this air portion of the array and which is why we put the array here won't do as well. And so some of the bullet points that I have listed over here and I guess project takeaways are one it enhances the farm's viability. There are a few different ownership structures for solar and the two most basic straightforward are our direct ownership so the farmer or land owner owning the array and then we seeing the land to a third party owner like Hyperion systems. In which the farmer or land owner will receive a lease payment. That's an annual lease payment and why I highlight that for farm viability is because it's regularly recurring operating income that the farm can count on. Ethan touched on climate change and the impacts and inconsistencies and growing. The field that you're seeing here we were in a significant drought last year. It suffered total crop loss for beats across this portion of the field USDA crop insurance provided and back Joe on the total crop loss that he suffered. This farm or excuse me this this array provides a secondary revenue stream, and that's going to be again it's not a one shot or one term funding. This it's going to be annual how we're breaking it up is quarterly payments but it's locked in for 20 years. Revenue diversification touched on that in those comments reduces the farm's environmental impact. Joe is a subscriber to this project so it's it's a community shared solar. Joe will offtake about 50% of the power. And with that he's going to be given a power rate reduction of 17 and a half percent so on his ever source utility bill whatever the current rate is from ever source for that month. He'll be, it'll be 17 and a half percent less than that so again sort of an economic benefit for him. And then some of the value add benefits that I'm really excited about and excited to share publicly. This is a field that it's off of Shattuck off of Commons road about 800 feet from Shattuck 1000 feet from common so somewhat of a remote site. This array is really a vehicle, we're leveraging the project funding and bringing power out to the site Joe will have a three prong outlets out there for generators other equipment for him to use. Joe is not the only farmer in this area is brother owns and operates commercial, or yeah, commercial farmland up here, the Chinsky farm is over on this side so it's bringing value not just to the eight and a half acres, two and a half which is solar but the neighboring farms. Well, there's a well point that's going to be later this month implemented to this field as I mentioned crop loss and this is a very dry field. We are implementing the solar again is paying for a well point to go in in order for him to water the crops out here that have been affected by dry conditions, and then the last sort of value add benefit of this array is road access road improvements. Again, this is an existing access road all the way out to Shattuck. And it's it's a dirt road and in the months of March, April, May, really muddy conditions difficult for tractors other farming equipment to access we improve that at no cost to the farm so sort of those three areas, really the first to power and water brought out to the site paid for are leveraged by the solar right and wrapping up here so what are takeaways and this is just my perspective and open discussion of course but locally if we need to. I, there's been a lot of commercial developments new apartment buildings in Amherst I've seen it my background is general contracting and construction so whenever a new building is going up in Amherst I kind of pay closer eyes attention to it and it seems like since I think there's been at least a dozen new apartment buildings that have gone up and I can think of only a couple that have on site renewable energy. I don't know if this is a bylaw that can be passed. It certainly takes I'm sure all of the different departments within Amherst to consider this but I think it should really be a requirement that if commercial apartment building is going in include on site renewable energy generation. At the state level, I think the state Jerry M. Dar has done just tremendous work in encouraging agrivoltaics and dual use pioneering really. But I think that we can be a bit more specific and differentiating the different types of solar, because it's not all the same. Traditional solar load of the ground versus pollinator versus sheep grazing versus this sort of elevated proper agrivoltaics is what I would I would call it but there in some different programs really viewed the same. And that's what this 200% limitation I'll touch on in a second gets to the impervious service limitation that's what I was referencing in the first slide. And within within different programs there's a limitation, the APR program specifically of no more than 5% of total land can be impervious surface. And solar modules are considered an impervious surface, which has been demonstrated there jack solar garden and others, you can grow crops directly underneath directly behind solar modules so I would encourage and I have encouraged voice this. This is a comment before that we should reconsider that as a commonwealth and then the 200% limitation. It eliminates small farms from participating in the current energy democratization, even touched on this, this energy transition is happening. And within different programs, there's a limitation to 200% of behind the meter energy use. So, for example, say a farm utilizes 10kw ac they can implement a system that is 20kw ac. And when I say small farms I don't necessarily mean in terms of acreage or pounds of produce per year, but it's because there, there might be farms and these are real examples 60 80 100 acre farms but their energy capacity is is just the 10kw so they're limited to that 200 200% or 20kw ac and that example. And that system size is about an eighth of an acre a quarter of an acre but yet they they're growing this large, these large fields and so part of that is because they don't have the infrastructure equipment on site to handle and process. This is elsewhere to go for example handles millions of pounds of squash from neighboring farms per year so he has a lot of behind the meter energy use. Think about how much of our produce goes down to Connecticut because they have that, I guess, structure and equipment and sort of dynamic set up there. So those are some kind of policy takeaway recommendations. I'll open it up to questions now and I'll stop screen share. Fantastic Jake. Thank you for that a great to see your work and really exciting to see the actual photos of the Joe's farm nearing end of construction looks looks looks like so. Great to see. Okay questions from the group here. Jake, I want to thank you for that. Incredibly detail. I sort of. Can you hear me because it's coming through garbled. I'm getting some garbling as well. I'll mute I apologize my speakers there's there's an issue I'll mute when the questions then I'll. Okay, so I was, I'm thanking you for giving us detail I love seeing the real life examples. In the first picture you showed which I think is like the UMass demonstration farm. There's a lot of brown land in between the crops is there a reason for that is just is you know so it doesn't look like you're using all your, you know farmland and I also understand like on a farm like every inch is not growing a crop. And so that was my question is, is that just because it's a demo project. And then on the Joe's field. You know how much like what what is he planning to grow and how much, how does he get his, his farm equipment in and out. And so is there space for that or is there more space for that than normal because their solar arrays there. Yeah, so the, the self dearfield project is really a pilot project, something that I've encouraged and have wished for for many years is that the entire area would be covered in crops, but with limited funding. They just grow directly in some different crop trials areas so that's why that is grown and implemented that way. But Joe's feel that project in North Hadley will be commercial broccoli production so yeah it'll be planted with standard tractors and equipment that he uses, and it will go as close to those posts those north to south posts as we can. And probably and so yes with that not every single we see like shade tobacco just went in on many of the fields neighboring this site and they're about three feet in between each row. So it will be more narrow than that I don't know the exact with dimensions but it's really a commercial farm setting which I'm just really excited for because Jax is sort of the paramount that's the project in Colorado is sort of the paramount agriple tag project at this point, but it's in my opinion it's sort of the CSA approach, which is really hands on and hand harvested and Joe will be operating equipment tractors different sprayers tilling and like he is a commercial farmer and that's what's going to occur at the site. And so it's 10 feet to module horizontal I wish I should have touched on this point but we're using single axis trackers and the type of tracker that we're using. It's independent motors so we have 26 different motors and we'll actually have Wi Fi out there and you'll be able to on your phone operate the different motors so if you needed more space above overhead. The panels will be able to tilt and you'll be able to control it remotely and tilt that panel the opposite way. So the tractors going down I later this summer I'll have video demonstration of it. But you'll have even more space to operate underneath the design considerations we took into effect into consideration when we were writing the farm plan and going through this it was years of planning with Joe quite frankly. And he has john dear massive first and a bunch of different tractors. No cab tractors so we're confident that that's not going to be an issue. Kind of turning the focus now to the shading considerations, and how that will operate. I think in years to come, what I would love to see because directly underneath the rows are going to be difficult in a practical commercial setting, potentially adding in perennial crops that don't have tractors in those areas, rhubarb is a crop that Joe has been adding to a bunch of different fields just given market conditions. That is one you plant and will be there for years to come, the life of the solar system potentially and then you go in and hand harvest that and so those more challenging areas to get into with a tractor and attachments might be better suited. I love to see asparagus, of course I had the crop, but taking in shading considerations impacts those are the areas with with the most shade directly underneath the modules. Great thank you. Jen if you have a follow up your. I have a broccoli question so is there is he going to be looking at like how much shade the brock like how it does versus. I mean, could there be too much shade for the broccoli. Yeah, they're absolutely good. And, and there could also be too much sunlight for I mean, like the beats for example last year that because of the drought or fatigue and did not grow. So, I guess growing conditions per year are variable. What we've seen why we selected broccoli that was one of the crops that UMass Dr. Steve Herbert has grown for the last seven years. Bearing levels of success some years the dryer years, the yields are very comparable to the control group. So this is what we'll see it's it's, it's, you know, it's it's commercial farming each year is different. There are no guarantees. So yeah, there could be too much shade but one of the things that Jerry will touch on there's a shading tool that we used in order to go through the as TGU approval process, and the areas in between the rows are only about 15% shade impacts, compared to full sunlight control group. The areas directly beneath are a lot higher about 40% 43% I think is what the shade tool gave back so 1520 15% more in between those rows and then and then much higher shade directly. I'll just add to that that the research project we have with DOE US DOE to set up site trials and some of the commercial projects we're hoping to include Jake and and Joe's site and Hadley as one of our site trial so projects will be able to be studied in earnest, but that project. We're hoping to collect some robust data science based data to be able to answer some of these questions but you know that that that experiment if you will takes a full growing season, or a couple growing seasons to even study the variations based on what type of season you have. And so it's a slow, slow science if you will, in terms of data collection you get one one experiment a year. Okay, Jack and then we'll turn over to to to first to see if there's any attendee questions and then and then to Jerry. Excellent presentation I kind of I want to acknowledge you know the family business nature of it with your dad. You know pioneering this technology and you and your mom and you know kind of taking it on and making it happen because it seems to be you know more important than ever right now so like that said, you, you have mentioned that the Joe's farm in North Hadley. It looks like he's leased in the land, and he's getting reduction it's very similar to what I'm doing in terms of leasing my roof. And so the reduction about 17% kind of brings up reminder to me, is that how most of the projects you've seen are been involved with are going and where they're leasing the land and not actually purchasing the solar system. Thank you. Yeah, I, my, I'm somewhat limited. I wish I could say that I've scaled and have practice across many different projects. You may well know, solar development is really time intensive process. And I think my takeaway at this point is if a farmer landowner wanted to build a commercial project, it's at least a part time job, especially early on. And so that's where Joe, who has this commercial agricultural business, didn't want to deal with that and I see we have another project that will build later this year is one of the same consideration for the farmer yes there's more benefit financially for the farmer landowner to own the system. But with that there's a lot more time investment up front, and then long term on M concern with the research structure which I'm sure you're familiar with, regardless of how the system performs you are going to get annual payment so I would love to see again there's more benefit to owning the system. Love to see farmers and the IRA bill really allows that because of the change of the ITC the investment tax credit. It will change some of those structure and I hope that more farmers are able to own the system because there's more benefit but that's, I think that more farmers just time limitations are kind of there's just a follow that up so in the situation where you know leasing the roof. The design sort of is on level with what you're going to use so that like every source doesn't want you pumping out in excess of amount to where they actually, they're only going to give you credits on a residential level anyway. And the farmer obviously that being able to produce much more that they can use. What's the agreement that has been arranged for them to recoup, you know, us and benefit from the from the solar. I'm not sure I fall in terms of a direct ownership structure or this lease for the leasing one, because, you know, they can they can accumulate all these credits that they're never going to use them for whatever source for the residential model. I'm wondering what the farm lease model is maybe doing those. So, this is yeah this is a community shared project there will be many subscribers to the project. Okay, they're going that route. Okay. And we have years of Joe's energy use bill so we are fairly confident in our projections and Joe is continuously adding energy, energy load to his business so we're, we expect that to continue even if it drops significantly, he would still retain that 17 and a half percent benefit. So he isn't so much dealing with the credits on on that end. Yeah, so the community share thing is another reason why, you know, having a solar developer involved. You know, for the actual installation and leasing a land is again that much more favorable for for an average farmer, I would think the thanks Jake. Thank you very much. Great. Okay, let's given given the time and Jerry's clearly given us a prompt as well, which thank you Jerry. Let's move on to Jerry Polano from the State Massachusetts Department of Ag resources here more specifics about the rules and regulations and the smart program for agrivoltaics and then we will open it up for questions as well. All right. Thank you, Jerry. Well, thank you, Dwayne and I did not mean to interrupt the program. I just wanted to make sure I could actually share and that's the only reason I went through that after I think I was going to interrupt. I'd be glad to. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Ethan and Jake for your presentations. Great presentations. It's a pleasure to be part of this program with you all and thank you Dwayne and good afternoon. I'm a solo by law working group and and other members of the of the meeting. This program is very important to end our in the Department of Energy resources as Dwayne had noted up front. The Department of Energy resources this is their regulation, and we work and collaborate with them closely on all managed pertaining to this. I'm here with this asterisk some of the slides idea we ours going to be working on this from the perspective of a combination of rules and regulations. Guidelines that are part of the Massachusetts smart program so you'll probably see a lot of noise so to speak type of slides apologies for those who find that was difficult to follow. I'm just going to touch on them though, mostly there there for your benefit for after the fact for your use. Going forward in your working group decisions. So let's get started and then I'm just going to just be real brief with this one and this is what Jake has touched upon and Ethan has also touched upon this is really really where it all started for all of us in Massachusetts back in 2009 2011. Again, this, this system gave a lot of inertia to what everyone is trying to do today when the big question was being asked back then by Jake's dad Steve Herbert and, and Mike from Berkshire management. Why can't we do both. Why can't we grow solar. On top of fields and let the field still develop and be productive. And that question is being still addressed today and we take a lot of what went into the initial concepts of the smart program came from the concepts that were built into this project. There's a primer and two slides. What is smart. Smart is the overall solar program in the state right now. It's voluntary it's declining incentive structure which means that it's built in different blocks 200 megawatt blocks, as a block gets filled up the incentive for the next block goes down gets reduced. And there are base incentives for the whole program. And then there are adders and certain system types and land uses and more highly compensated through those adders and some of those are building mounted as we spoke about landfills canopies and agricultural solo tariff generation units. What is the smart program. This is a program that was came about from the acts of 2016 directing do we are to develop a follow up program to s rec to. So it's 3200 megawatts started at 1600 and got up to 3200 megawatts soon thereafter. It's voluntary. It's either a 10 or 20 year term depending on the project size and the program is paid for by all the electric great pairs and invest owners. What is the smart egg solo tariff generation units will smart in itself as a combination of regs and guidelines and so is an AC is TGU. Regulations consist of definitions, special provisions, performance standards, simple supplemental set of guidelines and the smart tool itself that Jake had referenced a bullet down there that I wanted to note that none of the none of the rules and regulations in smart override the agricultural preservation restriction or the farm viability enhancement program policies of the department. So those are still intact as they are, and I stated, there are opportunities to work within each of those. And they do not on their own override. Any of they are not overridden by the smart a smart program, the STG program by definitions a schedule by definition. So what is an act solo tariff generation unit by definition it's a solo tariff generation unit and you'll see that in terms throughout the regulations and its own definition. It's a unit that generates electricity with the use of photovoltaics for an egg solo tariff generation unit it's one that allows the continued use of the land for agriculture so that's what the differences between a standard solo tariff generation unit and an egg solo tariff generation unit. And in that, in that effort it, the land that we're speaking of is land that's either in 61 a or important state farm land as defined by NRCS and USDA. The program if you want to have a agricultural solo tariff generation unit and you want to build one, you need to go through a predetermination process. This is a pre review for eligibility to confirm that you would be eligible for the adder and the adder for smart for an astgu is six cents. These are really the augmenting of the definition this really becomes the outline for the predetermination application that you would apply for. And it's really just augments again the definition of the solar tariff and an egg solo tariff generation unit. One loan interview with the continued use, you will prove in your predetermination application that items one item to that it was designed to optimize a balance between a generation of electricity and productivity of soils. Three, that it's a raised structure along for continuous growth of the crops underneath what height enough for a whole slew of agronomic activities for that you're designing this with a farm and an agronomist and you're working in conjunction with the UMass ag energy extension for compatibility and understanding of system designs, and you know what it means to the farming of that particular project. After the fact, number five there's annual reporting there's an initial report which will project what type of harvest and crops are going to be expected. But then there's an annual report due after every year to confirm that this land is still in agricultural production. Number six is other system design information that we need to understand what's being built. What kind of dual use system for instance how many growth acres of land they'll be in design drawings showing the system type etc. So the special provisions really become the outline for the, the plan for the predetermination application so that we can all understand what's going to be the after from what was there before. And the benefit of working with the UMass team is that they work from the farmers perspective, trying to make sure the farmer understands here's what you're doing today. So we're going to need to understand what you'll have to do after the fact when the solar systems installed. And let's see if we can understand that we're covering all the bases when that happens. Performance standards these these by regulation, essentially are the best management practice for installing any solar ground mounted system. Bullets really come from a number of different resources. Some of them run right from solo bylaw committees in Western mass, but these are best management practices to minimize and mitigate impact on farmland when building the solar project. Note that any project greater than 500 KW requires certification from a PE that the construction of the project actually comply with with these performance standards, and then by guidelines. The solar ag ASTGU just by guidelines themselves. The guidelines were revised once, but the base guidelines were panel heights I think I'm forgetting who asked the question. But the panel height above the ground is eight feet for fixed tilt 10 feet for tracking in the horizontal position. You've got a maximum sunlight reduction of 50% at every square foot to try to maintain as much sunlight as possible. sunlight requirements. Trying to assure that whatever you're trying to grow is compatible that it's either sun loving or shade tolerant, depending on where you're trying to locate your crop. The growing season is something that's what we're using in our smart tool to understand the shading and the sunlight needs of the project. And the maximum size for the project, which is now five megawatts AC with a two to one DC AC ratio and a total cap of seven and a half megawatts per project. That change from the original guidelines which had that is two megawatts AC, it grew to five megawatts AC based on stakeholder comment and feedback from the solar industry themselves. And there is an opportunity to get an exception for many of these system design parameters, based on what you think you can do and still meet the program needs to do guidelines that were added. One deal deals with the newly created farmland we were a little bit taken back by the number of early projects that were being submitted that were creating new farmland, either on sand pits, or clearing of forest land and so we needed to try to address that and added a guideline. One we didn't have any real knowledge, whether the newly created farmland was actually going to be productive. So it's now going to be only acceptable as an eligible piece of farmland. Once it has established agricultural production prior to the date when you submit the application. We don't consider that to be new created farmland unless it's greater than five years, and probably the biggest bullet number two is that no newly created farmland footprint can be the result of clearing a conversion of forest land, very contentious subject matter. That included all levels of administration and the review of whether or not that that would should be continued to happen and this was the results, and then also requiring soil test for this newly created farmland, working with you mass on generating what some of those parameters would be. The second new new guideline that was put into place addresses I think Martha's question. About repurposing the farmland. I think we found early on as well that some of the, if I could say, higher value field crop row crop type of production land was being proposed to become hay fields or becoming grazing. And we're trying to be amenable to that but at the same time, recognizing that that did take away from what a lot of people really wanted to keep with their local farmland and local community. So, in the if project is proposing a new, a new proposed grazing hay project on land and agricultural production on important farmland, then you need to demonstrate that you're going to do in combination with the concurrent growing of crops that are already there so you need to do it with a combination of either grazing or hay, the percentages stated there in, if you're going to do a grazing project on an existing operation that's row crops, then at least 33% of the project should be devoted to the comparable crops that are ready already at the site. Half of the hay, half of the project still be should still be devoted to comparable crops. Now there's also an option to transition to new commodities from crops that are comparable if adequate documentation can be provided. For that case and a lot of that is for some of the new farmers that are coming in that are wishing to change and do different things on the farm that had been done previously. This is one of the two new guidelines that were added and these are now effective base 16 is the smart tool that we spoke about early on the smart tool. This is the design tool that helps us look apples to apples for every project understanding the shading and the sunlight impact of these designs on every one of the projects. This is a couple of examples. This is designed by a solar developer. The left hand side of the screen is inputs in the right hand side of the outputs. This is an example of a fixed health system panels facing southeast. And as you can see on the right hand side if you can see the average shade is 32%, which means the average sunlight is 68% on this field so even though it's minimum it meets the minimum 50% requirement. There's much more than 50% sunlight, and this is a real conservative tool and that it's just basic trigonometry it's either the sun is on or the sun is off. Once the panel covers the land beneath it with its shade, then that's considered to be 0% such sunlight 100% shade. So it takes does not take into account any indirect sunlight which really adds a lot to some of these numbers as well. So we're trying to be conservative with our first initial designs you want to get it right. We want to get these projects up and running and being successful at the same time. This is an example of a single axis tracking project same thing left hand right hand sides left hands the inputs the right hand are the outputs. In this case this 36% was the average shade or 64% average sunlight. Now there's the study period up in the right hand side of the screen that we talked about for how we're examining sunlight and shading requirements through a growing season. Just a real quick review that of what we just went over in terms of the review process and the ongoing requirements. If you're someone like Jake trying to build one of these projects your first step is to work with the UMass clean energy extension for providing a and developing and ultimately providing a predetermination predetermination application. We are at MDAR for a joint review we review that once it's okayed, then the applicant gets a predetermination letter to proceed. Then the applicant needs to submit the final amount of information to the smart program that's required in order to get what's known as a preliminary statement of qualification and that's when construction can begin. That's where Jake is right now on his project. Once he's received permission to operate the project, he receives a final statement of obligation of qualification and that then begins to the incentive term for the smart program. Step six is most important. These are the annual reports that we're expecting these projects they all need to submit annual reports demonstrating that the land continues to be an agricultural production. And those reports are similar to what the initial report was in terms of actual pounds of harvest or actual grazing animals. So the step six is the last of the steps listed but also one that will become repetitive throughout the term of the project. So how far have we come. Here's a map of the participation in the smart today. We have approved 33 projects predetermination applications today, 33. And some of those yellow dots are multiple projects, either pairs, one in fact is a triplet. And those were done to work together on saving the cost and sharing the cost of the interconnection which is one of the reasons why as much as we've got 33 approved projects. There aren't 33 projects built completely they're still going either through their need for interconnection, or finalizing their information with do we are the 11 other sites are the ones that are currently in review so you can see this pretty much spread throughout the state. A lot of projects down in the south shore of cranberries and elsewhere across the stage it's a variety of projects and crops. Here it isn't in tabulous form. We're up to 40 almost 45 megawatts AC 80 megawatts DC for approved projects so we're looking forward to seeing a lot more projects being constructed this year to start seeing some real numbers being generated. Local crops that are being proposed cranberries pumpkins, butternut squash leafy greens, apples tomatoes hey Christmas trees and rope. And livestock cattle and sheep, part of the existing projects that were proposed. And then the ones that are currently being reviewed and discussed the looking more at broccoli grains blueberries and I should have added Jake's broccoli up into the proposed projects as well. And the total acres of impact so far 42425 on the approved projects and about a little over 550 for those inclusive of those that are still in review. So far we've come would be remiss not to note that some of these projects are being part of the Department of Energy grant to UMass Amherst for studying and researching and having us better understand the impact on soils, production, etc. These projects we're really looking forward to this UMass working hand in hand with Ethan's American farmland trust group to do this research. So it's a great team together that's trying to pull together information and better understand what we're trying to achieve with dual use here in Massachusetts. Challenges and opportunities some of the challenges that we've seen the extended interconnection timelines we think that's really been a slow up for widely some of these projects have taken a long time to come on board. Another challenge for us early on was ensuring that these projects were balancing they were optimizing not only solar production, but ad production as well. Solar production now is becoming a lot easier to to maintain solar panels and becoming wattages of upwards of five to 600 watts. When we started the program we were looking at 300 watt panel so they've doubled in wattage, some of it is size but a lot of it is efficiency as well. I think the challenges that we all admitted admittedly know as research and data is needed, particularly on the agricultural side, particularly on saturation points of a variety of crops to see what is the best mix of sunlight and photosynthetic active radiation that's needed for growing these crops. If we can do, if we can get more research and data on both of those topics will be doing a lot better on design and opportunities out for sure. It does provide additional revenue for farmers as Ethan had brought out and noted and jaked it as well. It contributes to the commonwealth's decarbonization goals are zero net energy goals for the state. And for us agriculturally in all of us in the state. It keeps the land productive keeps it in agriculture keeps the local food movement going, which we want to keep keeping in action as it's been so successful in these last few years. Here's just with some photos. This was the first completed project in the state, down in months in just a few miles away. And it was a hay project you can see how successful the hay projects are. This one exceeded expectations. 249 kw single axis tracking. This is the note and farm project that Ethan had mentioned. This is the north side of the project 250 kw AC fixed tilt panels, actually southeast facing in this space as well, almost the agronomy lab duplicate. That was what a cover crop. This is a picture about two weeks ago after leafy greens had been planted. And in every other role there will be butternut squash as well. And you can see some of the sunlight this is a late afternoon photo. So that shading will not be the same if you were there at nine or 10 o'clock in the morning. You can really see if I can blow up the phone with all for everyone's benefit but there are senses out there for the research that are sensing temperature humidity soil moisture leaf wetness power photosynthetic active radiation, water amounts, etc. There are two sets up inside each of these rows, four of them per row to better understand the research and the impact on the project. This is the southeast facing portion of that same project and this is grazing. And it's a 1.75 megawatt AC and again the same type of system fixed tilt space panels. And these 500 and greater KW projects comes battery storage and that's on the Milton farm project as well. And that concludes presentation I'm sorry if I went through that rapidly, but hopefully some of this information can be useful for you. In the future discussions that you're having in your bylaw working group. Thank you Jerry yeah that was great to really have a rundown of the state relations and and some of the the and where we stand in terms of projects to date. Really helpful thank you. Yep. Can we have that last slide back up. Sure. Yeah. Thank you. This slide you're talking about Jack or the Jerry's contact. The very last one with his contact info. There you go. So. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. All right great. Excellent thank you Jerry let's focus some questions on Jerry and then with apologies. Our working group meeting does go to 130 so we'll continue this for as long as we we care to and our guests can stay with us. So let's bring forth any questions for Jerry, and then we will open it up for general questions for any of our speakers I see Ethan and jaker are remain with us. First from the, from the working group and then there are some questions from the attendees as well. So Janet, and then Jack, please. So when I, when I've talked to NOFA and CISA and some farmers, I kept on hearing this phrase, just sheet. And I know that CISA wrote a letter saying when they were looking at the new smart regulations to make sure that prime soils were used for vegetable growing and not just grazing. So I think the fear is that of conversion to grazing, because you can get these, you know, the credits, or that mean the subsidy for what would be simpler kind of farming practices I also know that alternating animals on land is part of regenerative farming practices. So I'm wondering, like, where, what are the numbers and so, you know, under the ASTG use subsidy. What is the value of that per acre. If you, you know, and I know that would vary with how, you know, how much energy is being generated by the system but I also know if you're in a business you would look at the cost of the expected cost of the array and the estimated annual revenue from the energy produced and so my question for Jake was how much did Joe's array cost and what was the estimate on the annual revenue just from electricity and the subsidies the state provides. And can someone just give me a ballpark of what the value of the subsidy is per acre, like how much, you know, or just from selling the energy because I keep on asking for these numbers and so the question is, you know, we're trying to prevent the loss of farmland but you know maybe we want to prevent the rise of sheep herding in Massachusetts versus the loss of vegetable production. Can I just hear some numbers. Maybe I'll start by saying, you know, these are obviously the state rules and regulations are publicly available numbers you get six cents per kilowatt hour. Obviously what you get per acre depends on the solar productivity and how spaced out the solar panels are, and so forth. When it comes to numbers for actual projects. That is often business confidential information so I respect that and don't feel like that needs to be disclosed to the public. I would put Jake on the, you know, on the on the thing but I think the state and we and UMass must know what the value is this per acre system. It really varies. What's the variation like what's going on and also do keep in mind the six cent adder for agriboltex. These projects cost more. That's the the the adder I'm not sure how it breaks down but you know the getting these things 10 feet off the ground as opposed to one foot off the ground translates to more steel and other materials. So you're producing electricity and selling it and you're getting state subsidies, and nobody will estimate numbers like I know if I was a banks and someone came to me and they're like well it might vary. But do we have a sense of how much per acre is made on an average array, including, you know, of energy, including the subsidy I know electricity prices vary they vary by the hour. I'm just kind of wondering, is this is the state subsidy, what's the value, like, what are you know the, what are the numbers. Yeah, but Jen, I think we've covered this before where I basically walked through the declining. I'm sorry to chime in when you can go ahead Laura, yeah. This is our guest large a solar developer. Yeah, we talked about the declining value of the smart credits. Over time, that's the value of the solar you that's publicly available, you can go online you can Google smart subsidy values, and you can look at our region of Massachusetts and you can see what the value is right now. Now, what's confidential is the lease rate that each individual lend and or locks into what's confidential is the cost of capital for each asset owner, and the tax equity valuation and their cost of debt. That leads to the variation so I'm quite certain that Massachusetts will give you a range of the value of solar but these are not, you know, the underwriting criteria for these assets is 40 years. So, you know, that's really what a debt provider and an asset owner is going to look at a 40 year cash flow of electricity. And so, you know, I mean, those are the that's the variability within there but the smart rates are obviously completely public and then you can basically get a sense of, you know, it's very easy to do if you look at the projects that are interconnected in Massachusetts, how much they're producing a year, multiplied by the smart value. There's the revenue from the project. How do you really do that for me or tell me that now without me having to do an individual calculation on the state. I mean, do you have a ballpark sense of the values of these things. I can, I'm happy to jump in for the Hadley project example. It was a pretty low base compensation rate just because Western Mass has a lot of deployment ever source west right so I think it was block nine, around 11 cents base compensation rate and then we had three adders for the project and all of this is public information, 6 cent adder the agricultural adder community shares low income community support adder, and then a tracker adder for a sense so 13 cents for the adders about 24 cents it wasn't exactly 20 but about 24 cents for the adder. And then in terms of the public setting and offering real specifics that it's a bit challenging. But I think the cost of a STG use is is becoming more competitive, certainly less than $3 per watt so there's a little bit of confidential information that I'm willing to share that I don't know if you'll get from other developers, driving you know, lower and lower below $3 we're already at that. All that so constantly trying to find efficiencies and provide more value. Thank you, Jake. Okay. Lauren, while you're had had the speaker there what do you want to ask a question then we'll go with Jack. Yeah, go ahead. I'm actually going to take my hand down grand thanks. Okay, great. Okay, Jack. Yeah, I actually, I'm going to ask that because it's just kind of review that there's a lot of different little silos that where money comes in, and it is complicated. Just a technical question. The, the, the single access tracking, obviously increases the efficiency. And I guess there's an adder to it, maybe that tells us, you know, what it adds. But again, if you could do the math, how much does that increase the, you know, annual output for solar ray, compared to one that does not have that that tracker. The good question that's relevant, not just agrivoltaics with just any, any solar project. Yeah. I understand and Jake, you can correct me if I'm wrong and Ethan as well that the solar tracker would adds anywhere from 20 to 25% more energy over the course of a year. And the, the basis of, of what that added cost is something that I'm not, I don't really have a handle on what it tells us to add the solar tracking system to a fixed system, but maybe Jake has better numbers than than I can share with you. Oh, no. Yeah, the energy efficiency output Jerry you're, you know, spot on at least from what I've seen. In terms of development costs. That's, I'm not trying to skirt it's hard to answer just it's site dependent scale dependent. So I think for considering like grafting which is a real proper, high elevated compared to Hadley, they're they're two very different scales. You know, I'd be happy to look at specific scenarios and model that out and do some cost projections to help that understanding Jack. Just a little bit ambiguous. Again, I guess, and just one more question. I just did the simple math on Jerry's table looks like the average project is 13 acres in size, you know, including the peripheral areas, which it seems like a lot larger than than the type of projects Jake you have been working on that are dual use so dual use is like the exclusive of these of the of the egg as to you. Correct. It doesn't have to be dual use. It can just be, you know, regular ground mounted solar arrays. On that table jack. Yes. No that table is specific to the dual use projects in the state. Oh, okay. Many of the other ones are megawatt scale projects. Yes. So the dual use are that big then I didn't realize okay. Yes, some of them are as large as 2025 acres and some of them are five seven acres eight acres nine acres. Wow, okay. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. I have two questions from the public participants. So let's go to those. And then we'll open it up for any other questions for for all of our guests, or to any of our guests so I'm going to go first with Steve roof. And here he comes. You're up Steve. Thank you guys really, really wonderful presentation. I'm wondering, it seems like dual use is really great when you have really restricted area you're really trying to put as much into a small area. Under what conditions is integrating solar and agriculture, the dual use of the agrovoltaics, better than just using separate patches of land one dedicated to solar and one dedicated to agriculture. That's a good question. I think, if you can demonstrate that when you combine the two together, known as an agriculture land equivalent ratio, and you can actually show a higher production of both of them being integrated together. So that's planted separately, so to speak planting solar on its own, and crops on their own. Then that's when the proof of integrating the system would be a positive. And is that is that part of the ASTG you requirements. That's the good point Steve it was something that we tried to include early on in the program when we were developing our initial guidelines we wanted to see the land equivalent ratio demonstrating but we got a lot of pushback from just people uncertain as to what some of those projections might be and how complicated would be introducing it to the overall guidelines in the program. Okay, and if I can ask one other simple question. What's, what do you think the total capacity for dual user agrovoltaics could be for out to 2050 for achieving Massachusetts renewable energy. That's a question. Thank you. I have to think about that I guess. It, it could be, I guess I get we would need to go through these early growing stages to find out just how successful these projects are, and how much land and sunlight needs they could be. I really like I be guessing Steve I really don't have a good feel for how many megawatts it would be in the megawatts so that's where we are now. I'd be guessing I'm sorry. Okay, well thank you. Thanks Steve for those questions and let me open it up to, I presume that you Michael. So I will elevate you here as well. Thank you. My name is Michael Pelt and I'm speaking as a co owner of 25 acres of land subject to an agricultural preservation restriction I'd like to thank everyone for the presentation and the questions. It's certainly been very helpful to me as a landowner. I think one question Steve roof raised brings up the subject of land subject to agricultural preservation restrictions. Okay, and I have been wondering for years, when the mass department of agriculture resources is going to go back and look at its policy guidelines really a key obstacle and that's 200% of the on farm use Jake mentioned that as a key obstacle, and frankly, I'm at a loss to understand why it's still there or no exception to it has been created. The policy that I found was adopted by the agricultural lands preservation committee in 2018 at a public meeting. I assume it could be modified just as easily. And let me make clear for the traditional ground mounted solar that takes land out of agriculture production. I think the department should be applauded for allowing as much as 200%. I think that's leaning over backwards to try to integrate solar with that may take some land out of production. And what I am completely at a loss to understand is why that has to be there for land that it's where the solar is perfectly compatible. I've studied our APR. You can see where MDAR has any authority to prevent dual use solar. And when I look at that exception. It, it drives me up the wall I've consulted with Jake, we have high voltage power lines. We could probably have a 500 kilowatt site. The problem is, there's no buildings on the land we lease it to a neighboring farmer. And so the one obstacle, tremendous as it was to hear Jerry talk about everything that MDAR is doing is the one obstacle to several hundred kilowatts and by the way it's in South Deerfield, literally right around the corner five minutes from the last land is MDAR is 200% limitation. I mean is MDAR going to do anything about it. Voluntarily, please help. Well thank you for that feedback Michael and I can bring this back to the APR group. Did you participate in any of the most recent listening sessions on APR the state had across the state. Well I would, I would appreciate it. And Jake has my contact information. Okay, what I can say is, and it may be helpful. I've been litigating foreign against solar projects for 10 years. Yeah, that's my legal specialty. And I have studied at least our year 2000 APR. And I think MDAR is way out on a limb, and I'd be happy to share that analysis and hopefully, you know I'm trying to be positive I'm hoping that would encourage MDAR to have the Agricultural Lands Committee just add, you know, it's, it's, it's Roman numeral three number six saying that this does not apply to dual use, and it would be precisely the kinds of projects that you Jerry are working on I mean that that's all we're talking about. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for your input. Okay. Okay, thank you everybody. We are at time. Janet, do you have like a question you're really dying ask. Of course I do, but it's a quick one. I'm wondering if do we are and DR are going to be tracking about if there's conversion of vegetable crop lands to herding lands. And also what if the you're finding that the productivity of the land is dropping under dual use are you going to be monitoring that and then responding to that. We can do some tracking of how much line is being converted Janet. We, we have a database of all existing projects and we can do that tracking. The reason for the guideline being added as I spoke. For the second part of your question. Yes, we will need to respond if we start finding some of these projects is just not producing what they're supposed to be doing. And that's going to be found out through annual reporting and more research and understanding so yes. With that, let me close out the meeting by first thanking Jake and Jerry and Ethan in absentia. He had to he just texted me had to had to jump on another call. This has been really not really great, right on target for what our working group needs to hear and understand. And so really appreciate your working with us and the time you spent with us and the presentations. Again, we'll make the presentations available on our source of materials for the for the working groups of the public has access to those as well. But let me just really thank you Jerry and Jake for for your presentations and contributions today. Thank you for inviting us. Absolutely. Okay, great. And with that, we're at time, we will work on the rest of the postpone the rest of the agenda for today till the next meeting. I don't think there was anything critical in the rest of the agenda that can't wait. That being said, I will see if there's any questions from the committee on that, and I do see Martha has something. Yeah. Okay, two questions one was somebody taking minutes today. I had thought about that after I started. And I figured that I don't think you really need to take minutes on these public presentations except for the fact that we had public presentations, and that the presentation materials are available on the on the website and that we had. The recordings available. So I will write something up for Stephanie on that. And I just I'm excited I didn't want to bother any of our committee members with taking notes on all the Q&A and presentations I think they stand for the standard. The other question then is what's, what are we going to be doing next time is the is next time, the great big time that we study the maps. Well, that'll be two weeks from now we should be able to take a look at the maps yes. Yeah, yeah, is there any chance we could meet in the town room and have the maps just really displayed on the big screen. I'm not sure whether we can do anything on the big screen that we can't do on the little screen here. We can raise that with with Stephanie. I'm not sure it truthfully in this day and age it makes it maybe less convenient for people, especially in the summer who may be participating from different places cost transportation cost cost the fossil fuels and then the parking meter to, you know, okay. Any other questions or comments from the committee members. No, just thank you very much this has been super informative. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. I feel I learned a lot about, you know, it was nice to see the broccoli growing. It's not growing yet but I will offer. We're turning over the site the modules we finished putting up today, all underground work has already been completed. And we're turning the site over to Joe later this month and will he'll be telling and planting crock man not sure exactly one maybe maybe it would be August it's for a fall harvest, but would be great to have the working group out for a tour and a site visit for real practical you know, hands on I think that that just provides real value this tangibility. It's not something theoretical it's, it's, we can look at that at some point in the future. You have my contact info I of course Dwayne and all others. So, that's, you know, great. That was great to have some kind of an open house later later in the in the year perhaps other farmers would be interested to do to, you know, see that. Yeah. Okay, very good. Okay, with that, have a good Friday, a good weekend. The sky's clear. And we can all go outside. Okay. Thanks. Let's see in in two weeks and I'll work with Stephanie and everybody on on sort of topics in addition to the mapping. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thanks, Jerry. Thanks, Jerry. Thank you all. Appreciate it.