First cranberries harvested from bogs with solar panels overhead

Two cranberry bogs in Massachusetts have brought in their first harvests since solar panels went up overhead. The Black Cat Agrivoltaics Project in Plymouth and the Ring Road Agrivoltaics Project in Kingston pair solar panels with active cranberry growing, a setup known as agrivoltaics. Both bogs had sat unused for years because farming them alone no longer paid off. Adding solar power on top gives the landowner lease income from the energy company, while the farmer who manages the crops gets paid for that work on top of selling the cranberries themselves.

The projects were built by Distributed Energy Infrastructure for developer Greenbacker Renewables, with close input from the farmer managing the land to make sure construction didn't harm the wetland. Black Cat generates 1 megawatt of power and stores energy in a 2.7-megawatt-hour battery. Ring Road is larger, at 4.4 megawatts with a 13.5-megawatt-hour battery. Both were finalists for the North American Agrivoltaics Awards.

This isn't a program homeowners can sign up for, but it points to a broader trend: solar power and farming can share the same land, even in sensitive spots like wetland cranberry bogs. If you have farmland or marginal acreage that isn't paying its way, projects like these show one path other landowners have used to combine crop income with solar lease payments, though the specifics depend heavily on the land and local rules.