French Farmers Can Get A Free Shed With Rooftop Solar Panels

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As if rural solar critics don’t have enough on their hands, here comes the UK firm Octopus Energy with a new deal to tempt many more farmers into the solar field. Octopus is offering to build large new sheds on farms free of charge, complete with rooftop solar panels. The new plan adds yet another wrinkle to the firm’s focus on small-scale rooftop solar installations as well as large-scale solar and wind farms.

Have Some Rooftop Solar Panels With Your Free Shed

Before our US readers get too excited, the new offer only applies to farmers in France, at least for the time being. However, Octopus already has a renewable energy foothold in Texas, so the door could be open to a similar program here in the US.

The basic outline of the shed-plus-solar program sounds simple enough. Octopus has procured the SunGen 10 (not to be confused with the family-owned US firm SunGen Power) rooftop solar portfolio from the French asset management firm ELECO, which specializes in solar development.

The acquisition adds 100 rooftop solar projects on farms in France to the Octopus roster, and there is plenty more where that came from. “Octopus will also work with ELECO and local partners to build up to 100MW new rooftop solar projects at hundreds of French farms by 2030,” Octopus  explains.

“The partners will build large sheds with solar panels on the rooftops on farmers’ land. Farmers benefit from using the new buildings for free to store equipment, vehicles and hay, saving tens of thousands of euros they’d have each spent building the structures themselves,” the company adds.

Alex Brierley, the co-head of Octopus Energy Generation, also chipped in his two cents with an endorsement of the small-scale distributed rooftop solar plan, noting that solar energy is “consistently one of the cheapest sources of energy we can build.”

Rooftop Solar & The Agrivoltaic Revolution

The rooftop solar shed is of a piece with the agrivoltaic movement, though there are significant differences. Agrivoltaics refers to specially designed solar arrays that enable farming to take place on the same land. That’s not the same as a shed, which takes up space (see more agrivoltaic background here).

Still, the underlying idea is similar. An agrivoltaic array provides farmers with an opportunity to realize additional revenue from their land, or to benefit from generating their own electricity. If a particular farmer needs to build a new shed with or without solar panels, then getting one for free is a money-saver, and the rooftop solar panels are an added perk. Either way, the result is a more secure economic outlook for the farmer.

For that matter, if rural solar critics are upset about the use of farmland as a sort of power station, they are being awfully selective about the kinds of energy-related structures they don’t approve of. Rooftop solar panels are new, but farmers have been taking advantage of direct solar energy for generations, most commonly in the form of greenhouses.

Here in the US, the Department of Agriculture is also encouraging farmers to adopt high tunnel systems or “hoop houses.” These are designed to extend the growing season by protecting crops from severe weather in early spring and late fall.

“Typically, a high tunnel system is composed of metal or plastic ribs covered in polyethylene with end walls framed with wood covered in polycarbonate,” explains the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service. That doesn’t sound like a particularly aesthetic addition to the rural landscape. Neither does plastic mulching, baling, and other plastic-saturated features of the modern farm, but you don’t hear much objection to that from the neighbors (if you do, drop us a note in the comment thread).

Beyond Free Rooftop Solar Sheds: The REAP program

Free sheds or not, farmers across the US have already hopped on the rooftop solar bandwagon with an assist from the USDA-administered REAP (Rural Energy for America) financial assistance program.

REAP covers a whole laundry list of renewable energy projects, though one thing it does not cover is the cost of a new-built roof for rooftop solar panels. The program will only cover the cost of making structural improvements to an existing roof, deemed necessary to support a rooftop solar array.

In an interesting twist, REAP will cover the cost of purchasing and installing carports, if they are “used as an elevated support structure for an agrivoltaic or solar EV charging station project.”

The language is a bit vague, but readymade carports are commonly used for agricultural purposes in the US. That could enable solar carports and EV charging stations to slip into the definition of an agrivoltaic use.

Meanwhile, Over In Texas

CleanTechnica took note of Octopus’s first foray into Texas back in 2020, and the company has been very busy since then. In one recent development, Octopus and Rivian inked a deal to provide a 100% renewable energy plan to Rivian owners in Texas. Just in time for the rollout of the new Rivian R2 SUV, the plan covers home electricity use as well as EV charging, sweetening the pot with a discounted rate for night-time EV charging.

In June, Octopus also launched the software-enabled “Intelligent Octopus” program in Texas, which is designed to help homeowners deploy their battery storage to support the grid when needed. Octopus will automatically recharge the battery from the grid at a 50% discount from its normal rate, leveraging the availability of excess renewable energy at off-peak hours.

That’s a clever way of extending access to renewable energy for households that don’t have their own rooftop solar panels. It also dovetails neatly with the US Department of Energy’s vision of a decentralized, resilient grid powered by distributed energy resources.

“Octopus Energy covers the cost of charging the battery for energy that ends up being exported and any available energy can be dispatched to the grid when it’s needed most — for example, during extremely hot summer afternoons,” the company emphasizes.

Keep an eye on Texas for more activity in the fields of rooftop solar and distributed energy resources. The Energy Department is supporting a comprehensive DERS analysis in Texas under the wing of the University of Texas at Arlington, called the Texas Aggregated Distributed Energy Resources Pilot Project.

The collaborative effort includes a stakeholder task force chaired, somewhat ironically, by the leading energy firm CenterPoint, so hold on to your hats.

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Image: Farmers in France can apply for free sheds with rooftop solar panels from the UK firm Octopus, which also has a foothold in Texas (courtesy of Octopus).