Home – Energy – Solar farms are putting sheep under the panels, and the land beneath clean energy is becoming part of the system
At first, the idea sounds almost too simple. Bring about 40 native sheep onto a solar farm, let them graze between the panels, and watch a quiet field begin doing more than one job at once.
That is what Westmill Solar has been doing near Watchfield, on the Oxfordshire and Wiltshire border in southern England, where a community-owned solar site has turned grazing into part of its clean-energy maintenance system.
The lesson is not that sheep can “save” solar power. It is more practical than that. Westmill shows how renewable energy projects can be designed to produce electricity while also supporting farming, soil life, wildflowers, pollinators, and the kind of rural landscape people actually recognize when they look out across a field.
Westmill Solar is not a small backyard experiment. The co-op says its site covers 30 acres, holds more than 20,000 polycrystalline PV panels, and generates about 4.5 gigawatt-hours a year, enough electricity for roughly 1,600 homes annually on average.
The project also has a community angle that matters. Westmill Solar Co-operative says it was created to show that ordinary people can help develop renewable energy, and WeSET, the linked charitable trust, supports local energy and education projects within a 25-mile radius.
That makes the sheep more than a charming photo opportunity. In practical terms, they are part of a bigger question facing solar developers everywhere, which is how to build clean power without making rural land feel like it has been fenced off from everyday life.
After the solar farm was built, Westmill says the land was seeded with a mix of local plant types. That helped wildflowers and other plants take hold on ground that could otherwise have become a thin strip of utility grass.
Then came the flock. For the past four years, around 40 Cotswold and Lincoln sheep have grazed the site, eating a variety of plants and helping prevent any one species from taking over.
That is the core idea behind the ecological principle known as “intermediate disturbance.” Too little management can allow aggressive plants to dominate, while too much mowing can flatten habitat. Sheep, used carefully, offer a middle path.
Timing is the small detail that makes the system work. Westmill says the sheep graze during winter, when they are less likely to disturb ground-nesting birds and when the flowering plants that feed pollinating insects are not in bloom.
Anyone who has watched a lawn crew run through a field knows the tradeoff. Machines are fast, but they bring noise, exhaust fumes, and a hard cut across the landscape. Sheep move slower, leave natural fertilizer behind, and trim the vegetation without turning the site into a sterile patch of grass.
That does not mean grazing is magic. It has to be managed. But for the most part, Westmill’s approach suggests that a solar farm can be treated less like an industrial yard and more like a working ecosystem.
One of the more interesting findings is that the biology changed the engineering. Westmill says its panels were chosen with sheep grazing in mind, meaning the land between the rows could support animals without major concern that they would damage the equipment.
At first, shepherdess Vera Hoenen was worried the sheep might harm the panels. According to Westmill, she later found the structures sturdy enough that some extra protections could be scaled back.
The benefit also went the other way. The sheep used the panels as shelter from wind and rain, and Westmill says the varied plant life helped them gain weight more effectively. When that sticky summer heat or rough winter weather rolls in, a panel is not just a power generator for a sheep. It is a roof.
The bigger debate is about land. Critics of large solar projects often worry that panels will push food production aside, especially in rural areas already under pressure from housing, road traffic, and energy infrastructure.
WeSET’s own figures put the land question in sharper focus. It says about 44.5 million acres of land in the United Kingdom are used for agriculture, while about 44,500 acres are currently used for solar, or 0.1 percent. A fourfold increase in solar would still use about 0.4 percent of U.K. agricultural land, by its estimate.
That does not answer every concern. High-grade farmland still needs protection, and badly planned solar can create real local friction. But the Westmill model points to a more nuanced answer, where some solar sites also keep land in low-impact agricultural use.
The idea has a name, “agrivoltaics.” The U.S. Department of Energy defines it as placing agricultural production, including crops, livestock, or pollinator habitat, under solar panels or between panel rows.
The approach is already moving beyond demonstration projects. The Department of Energy says NREL had identified 566 U.S. agrivoltaic projects as of August 2024, collectively generating more than 10 gigawatts of renewable energy among crops, grazing pastures, or pollinator habitats.
Sheep are one of the easier fits. DOE guidance says solar operators can reduce mowing, herbicide use, and other vegetation-management needs through sheep grazing, while local shepherds can be paid to manage the animals. As of November 2023, more than 4,000 megawatts of U.S. solar generation included sheep grazing underneath, according to NREL InSPIRE data cited by DOE.
Still, the model has limits. DOE notes that grazing systems need proper wire management, and solar design must account for animal movement, equipment access, panel height, and the possibility of infrastructure damage.
That is why Westmill’s story is useful. It does not pretend that every solar site should simply open the gate and let animals wander in. It shows that when solar farms are planned from the beginning with plants, animals, maintenance crews, and nearby communities in mind, the result can be more resilient.
At the end of the day, the most important discovery may be the simplest one. Clean energy does not have to mean choosing between the field and the fuel. Sometimes, with the right design, the field can do both.
The official statement was published on Westmill Energy.
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