A small herd of lowing cattle lumbered out of the shade and into the light.
They kicked up tiny white butterflies as they moved, seeking out a thick patch of grass and clover. Behind them were rows and rows of mounted solar panels facing skyward.
The group, about ten cows and their calves, is the resident herd at a solar farm in Christiana, Tennessee. The cattle are early adopters; the 40-acre farm is the world’s only commercial scale solar energy plant co-located with cattle production.
It’s owned by Silicon Ranch, a 15-year-old company based in Nashville. The group has big plans to foster the integration of cattle and solar energy production thanks to a patented technology they are case testing in Tennessee.
The company, and its team of interdisciplinary researchers who built the technology, believes the co-location of the two land uses is a win-win for the agriculture and energy sectors, which have both been navigating unpredictable and sometimes volatile market conditions over the past few years. The software, called CattleTracker, offers a simple yet scalable solution, they say.
“I really do think this is the beginning of being able to scale this to all of our ranches, many of which are thousands of acres, and it opens up a tremendous amount of opportunity,” Silicon Ranch CEO Reagan Farr said at a launch event in Christiana on Thursday, April 30.
The official launch of CattleTracker underscores Tennessee’s growing place in the U.S. solar energy industry, from manufacturing to research, development and “agrovoltaics.” With support from the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, multiple companies manufacturing equipment for solar energy production are basing their facilities in the state.
“Tennessee is in the center of a lot of American manufacturing for solar,” Silicon Ranch Chief Technology Officer Nick de Vries said. “It means we know our customer. We know our suppliers.”
The idea to raise cattle on a solar farm began with a question. And a problem.
In 2018, Silicon Ranch announced a 600-acre solar farm project in Bluffton, Georgia, a tiny rural community in the southwest part of the state near the Alabama border. Will Harris, a fourth generation cattle farmer and owner of White Oak Pastures, reached out to the company with concerns.
Harris wanted to understand how the solar farm would impact his family’s farming operation, which moved away from using industrial farming methods in 1995 and built a business model based on regenerative farming practices. That means, in part, the farm used to use pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and antibiotics, feeding animals a high carbohydrate diet of corn and soy. Now, Harris has been recognized globally for humane animal husbandry and environmental sustainability.
The meeting between Harris and Silicon Ranch executives led to a question: Why does solar energy and grass-fed meat production need to be separate?
In 2018, Silicon Ranch launched its Regenerative Energy platform, introducing sheep grazing to its solar farms first in Tennessee and then in other locations. Now, the company owns the largest flock of sheep in Georgia. But sheep, small and docile, are able to easily coexist with solar modules. Cattle are a different story.
Cattle are large, heavy animals that don’t fit under standard solar modules. They also tend to bump into things, which is dangerous for them and could be damaging to expensive solar energy equipment.
But there are advantages to consider, Silicon Ranch executives said. If you can somehow make the cattle and modules play nicely together, the animals benefit from plentiful shade and grass to freely graze. Farmers can lease their land to solar power companies to diversify income while still raising cattle, and the power companies have an easier time maintaining their solar farm.
All that considered, de Vries put together a team of ranchers, animal behavioral scientists, soil scientists and renewable energy engineers.
Solar modules work by rotating, tilting the panels to follow the sun’s movements throughout the day. At times, the modules can be almost vertical. That wouldn’t work if there were cattle around. And the modules can’t just be raised out of reach, because the materials to do that would be prohibitively expensive.
The team figured out what height the modules should be placed at to make them tall enough for cattle to pass under but not so tall that it would compromise energy prices. Then, they created a software system that would prevent modules from tracking the sun if cattle were nearby. Thus, CattleTracker was born.
“We needed a design that would be good for agriculture, good for solar, good for the ecology, good for the community,” de Vries said. “And that’s what drove me here.”
The Christiana solar plant plans to continue to use and improve upon the CattleTracker technology to show how it could be used in communities across the U.S.
At the Christiana solar plant, a fingerpost sign displays where all of the solar equipment came from to build the facility. The solar modules were made in Ohio by American company First Solar, while other parts were made in Alabama, Wisconsin and Virginia. The Nextpower tracker parts were made in Memphis, and the Shoals combiner boxes were made in Portland, Tennessee.
That focus on U.S. and Tennessee manufacturing is important to Farr, who said the thesis of Silicon Ranch was to build a company based in Tennessee that views power generation as an economic development opportunity for rural parts of the U.S.
“From the beginning, we’ve always asked how can we make solar do more?” Farr said.
Doing more, for Farr, means providing jobs in manufacturing and clean energy, especially in rural parts of the South that haven’t seen enough investment over the years.
Silicon Ranch was founded in Tennessee by former Gov. Phil Bredesen, Matt Kisber and Reagan Farr, and has grown into one of the largest independent power producers in the U.S., with more than 180 facilities in 15 states.
And while the Nashville-headquartered company has grown, Tennessee’s place in solar parts and energy storage manufacturing has grown alongside it.
One example is Shoals Technologies Group, based in Portland, which builds electrical balance of systems solutions for solar, energy storage and electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and has recently completed a major facility expansion. Create Energy, another Tennessee-based energy parts manufacturing company, recently announced an economic development deal with the state.
“We’re going to continue to work with companies that are forward thinking, such as Create Energy, and looking forward to what the future brings with AI and advanced manufacturing in general, how that just enhances our overall presence as a state,” TNECD commissioner Stuart McWhorter said in an April interview with The Tennessean.
Molly Davis covers growth and development in Nashville. You can email her with comments, questions and tips at mmdavis@tennessean.com.

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