Florida solar farms now host bees and cattle instead of mowed grass
Florida solar farms are opening their land to bees and cattle instead of sitting fenced off as mowed grass, according to Florida Power and Light. The company runs 120 solar energy centers, its term for large solar power plants, across 30 counties statewide, and says 53 of those sites now carry an active pilot pairing solar power with some other use of the land, what the company calls agrivoltaics, pairing solar equipment with farming, grazing or wildlife habitat on the same land instead of leaving it idle under the panels. That is about 44% of all 120 sites the company runs statewide, a figure this article calculates by dividing 53 by 120, not one Florida Power and Light states directly.
This is called agrivoltaics and it's one way that we are co-locating solar energy infrastructure with agricultural activity.
Taylor Hernandez, from Florida Power and Light, no further title given. Source 1.
The 40 site honeybee count comes from source 1, independently confirmed by source 2, and sits inside the 53 site total rather than beside it. More than 40 is the reported floor, not a precise count.
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| Total Florida Power and Light solar energy centers statewide | 120 |
| Sites with an active agrivoltaics pilot of any kind | 53 |
| Sites hosting a honeybee project specifically | 40 |
More than 40 of those sites host honeybee projects across 18 counties
More than 40 of the solar sites Florida Power and Light runs host a honeybee project, spanning 18 counties, according to the WUSF and WGCU public radio report that first counted them, independently confirmed by The Cool Down. That honeybee count sits inside the 53 site pilot total, not on top of it. The beekeeper partnership now reaches 18 of the 30 counties where the company has any solar site, about 60%, a second figure this article calculates rather than one the company states directly. Independent Florida beekeepers place hives on the fenced solar land, away from vehicle traffic and pesticide use nearby. Mark McCoy, a third generation beekeeper who runs McCoy Sunny South Apiaries in Loxahatchee, said the arrangement gives him access to remote areas and different locations he could not reach before, letting him find more natural resources for his bees.
The 18 county beekeeping figure comes from source 1, confirmed by source 2. These count 2 different scopes of the same company, its total solar footprint against its beekeeping footprint specifically, not 2 estimates of 1 figure.
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| Counties with a Florida Power and Light solar energy center | 30 |
| Counties with a Florida Power and Light beekeeper partnership | 18 |
Florida Power and Light is also piloting cattle grazing, sheep grazing and a crop study
Florida Power and Light is separately piloting cattle grazing on solar land in DeSoto County and sheep grazing in Northwest Florida, aiming to cut down on mowing rather than leave the ground bare under panels. Neither grazing pilot yet has a stated site count or start date. The company is also working with the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at its Miami Dade Solar Energy Center to study how well crops grow among the panels in Florida conditions, a study that remains underway with no published result yet. Pairing pollinator habitat with solar ground cover is already a documented, named practice nationally, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the national community organized specifically around grazing solar land counts more than 1,400 farmers, solar developers and other members since it was founded in 2008, according to the American Solar Grazing Association.