A solar farm with deer opens in Saarland, Germany
Germany opened its first large scale solar farm with deer on September 1, 2026, on the Weiherhof farm in Sotern, part of the town of Nohfelden in Saarland. Developer Perigus Energy Deutschland raised its solar panels 1.60 to 1.80 meters off the ground, high enough for a herd of about 150 fallow deer to walk freely beneath and between the rows. The solar structure covers 6.9 hectares of the larger fenced enclosure and generates 8.3 megawatts of power at peak output, a figure confirmed by the operator and by top agrar, a German farm trade outlet.
Perigus Energy states this as a range, not 2 disagreeing figures, so both ends are drawn from the same source.
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| Panel clearance | 1.60 to 1.80 meters |
The deer moved out during construction, then moved back in
Building the plant took about 9 months. During that stretch, the farm moved its fallow deer herd onto other fenced pasture elsewhere on the Weiherhof property, away from the construction site, a detail top agrar reported after reading the operator statement in full rather than a summary of it. The herd returned to the redesigned area once building finished at the end of July 2026. Wolfgang Welter, the farm owner, said the animals took to the changed ground quickly and now move naturally under and between the rows of panels. Perigus Energy said it plans to keep watching and recording how the herd behaves in the space going forward.
The company behind the project has done far more across Europe
Perigus Energy Deutschland was still building this project under the Orsted name when construction began in November 2025, before the company took on its current name. It now operates as part of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. In Germany alone, the company says it has realized 800 megawatts of wind and solar capacity over more than 30 years. Across the whole of Europe, it currently has 668 megawatts of renewable capacity installed and another 160 megawatts of solar and wind projects under construction, a much narrower measure than the German total above.
The first bar counts everything the company says it has built in Germany over more than 30 years. The other 2 bars count capacity across the whole of Europe today, not the same measure as the first.
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| Built in Germany, all time | 800 |
| Installed now, across Europe | 668 |
| Under construction, across Europe | 160 |
What German law does and does not count as agri photovoltaics
Germany runs a national technical standard for combining farming and solar power, called DIN SPEC 91434, and it does not explicitly address keeping animals like deer under panels. The federal network regulator, the Bundesnetzagentur, told top agrar that a livestock enclosure project has to prove its case individually and only on permanent grassland, since the standard was not written with animal husbandry in mind. The regulator has not ruled on the Sotern project by name, and no source states whether this plant has applied for agri photovoltaics status under the renewable energy law in Germany.
The plant is expected to power 3,200 households, and send 19,000 euros a year to the town
The operator expects the plant to generate about 9.5 million kilowatt hours a year, enough to power about 3,200 households, and to cut about 5,530 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. The renewable energy law in Germany pays host towns a municipal bonus under its paragraph 6 provision, 0.2 cents for every kilowatt hour a renewable project feeds into the grid. Multiplying that rate by the 9.5 million kilowatt hour figure above gives about 19,000 euros a year for the municipality of Nohfelden, a calculation this publication performed from 2 figures in the operator release, not a number the operator stated directly.