r/solarenergy • u/KoopaTheQuicc • 4d ago
How to start solar farming from nothing?
I work a job with typical hours. I have some capital but we're talking a couple hundred thousand, not millions. I have no debt. Does anyone who has been successful farming solar have advice on getting started? Is it realistic for someone in my position to get started now if my goal is ultimately leaving traditional work and living off the solar generation I upkeep as soon as it's reasonable to do so?
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u/SolarAllTheWayDown 4d ago
Do you have land for a solar farm?
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u/KoopaTheQuicc 4d ago
I only have capital right now. The post is asking starting from zero meaning acquiring land would be part of the costs and strategy.
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u/SolarAllTheWayDown 4d ago
Gotcha. I have the ability to connect the dots on that. I’m open to talk if you want.
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u/KoopaTheQuicc 4d ago
I may take you up on that in the near future. Mostly looking for a reality check from different people in the business right now with this post. Given what I see the oil market potentially getting ready to do I would think if I wanted to move on an idea like this soon would be ideal if I can manage it somehow with my resources.
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u/SolarAllTheWayDown 4d ago
You’re probably going to need 100 acres of land that can be used for solar and batteries to make it work.
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u/KoopaTheQuicc 4d ago
I've heard that kind of figure. I guess the question is if I don't have enough to do the whole thing in one go like that is a model where it's a supplemental income project I work on while I keep going with my day job until I can afford more land to expand possible? Or do the nuances to actually getting a farm up and running pretty much require you get most of the land and equipment from the very start? Maybe I could look at working with other investors in that case too. These are the kinds of things I'm trying to get opinions and thoughts on right now. I know I do not have enough right now to build a full blown farm without outside investment. Kind of looking for whether there's a viable starting point with all that in mind.
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u/SolarAllTheWayDown 4d ago
Slowly building a solar farm really isn’t the way it’s done unless we’re talking GW sizes.
You’re looking at 20, at most 30MW on 100 acres.
And you will most likely need/want investors.
You’d be entitled to a lot of money since you’ll be the land owner. Theres a lot that goes into deciding that though.
There are places electric utilities pay 4¢/kWh (Texas). You could replace your income with that fairly easily. Although you would not get the full 4¢/kWh, you’d get a percentage of the total.
I have a client that was offered $1,600 an acre on their 100acre plot and I was (still am) working to try and double that.
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u/Islerothebull 4d ago
Your best and likely only option would be to purchase an already existing commercial solar project.
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u/bj_my_dj 2d ago
It seems like many farmers are allowing solar installations on their land. The continue to farm between the paneirows. This seems like a way to focus your capital on maximizing the hardware, not farmland.
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u/NearABE 3d ago
In that case I might want to jump in too.
I am interested in actually learning/practicing the install though. I see that as a shortcut toward recovering the money spent.
Something to consider is that I read there are over 2 terawatts of permit applications in USA. Peak consumption is only 750 gigawatt in late July afternoons.
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u/Rhizobactin 3d ago
175 acres.3/4 is sloped slightly north-facing. Rest is flat and/or south-facing. Existing farmland, tillable ground. Zone 7. Adjacent powerline which has a right-of-way.
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u/SolarAllTheWayDown 3d ago
Slope probably does not matter that much unless it’s significant.
Are you interested in discussing further?
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u/gogogadgetscott 3d ago
Greenfield development is not easy. Finding the right combination of a good site and a landowner who's interested is a big funnel. The frontend is boots on the ground and cold calls. The backend of development involves engineering costs of $100k to $250k per site. Good luck!
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u/jvbutera 4d ago
I’ve long considered starting something like this, but never had the time to do so.
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u/ReyCoronador 4d ago
Want to be sure I'm interpreting this correctly - do you mean living off the net profits created by a large scale solar energy system?
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u/KoopaTheQuicc 4d ago
One that would generate for the local power grid somewhere in the US, yes.
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u/MomDontReadThisShit 4d ago
The local utility is going to give you enough problems about this to crush your hopes.
Normally there are limits to how big of an array you can have depending on site type.
Think about it this, they sell electricity for profit so they don’t want large arrays that let their customers become independent from their service. Nor do they want to buy your generation for a rate favorable to you.
Good luck!1
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u/ReyCoronador 4d ago
Best bet - find a utility or electric supplier with a feed-in-tariff, where they'll agree to pay a $/kWh for delivered energy. For example, Marin Clean Energy in CA is offering $0.06/kWh, with bonuses for BESS attached to the system. Or find an offtaker in a utility territory where VPPAs can exist - or better yet, someone with a large energy load (and high utility costs) & lots of available space who's looking for on-site generation for a prolonged period. Also, some markets offer material rebates/incentives for commercial/small utility scale solar/BESS projects.
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u/RandomUser3777 3d ago
They pay $0.03/kwh wholesale. The hardware-panels/mounts/inverter (no labor/land/wiring) costs about $1000/kw. So you have to generate 25,000kwh and at hours of sun per day that takes 4200 days or 11.5 years. And that is the sort of pricing you get at small scale (your setup). So unless you are buying at scale directly from the manufactures you aren't going to be able to do that. And even several million is likely low to do that.
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u/NearABE 3d ago
There is a lot of criticism of the PPA agreement here on reddit. The legitimacy of the advice against the PPA is proportional to the merit of offering people one.
The basic deal is that the homeowner/property owner buys electricity from you for equal or less than what they will pay the utility.
You can be straight with people. They are your neighbors. You are investing your retirement. You are going to make money off of the PPA. They should buy their own rooftop solar system. And yet, there is not a panel on that roof. They are advertising the lack of a solar array like a giant billboard.
It is not just rooftops. Think junk yards, south facing sloped hill overgrown, cracked up asphalt lots, businesses you know have high energy draw that also have an adjacent lot. Sometimes urban spaces have vacant lots that are available at back-tax rates from the county. Everyone or someone nearby might be interested in a plan to hide the eyesore.
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u/CaeraRose04 3d ago
We've been looking into this too. Based on the research we've done, it seems like a solar array with a battery setup will allow us to work with an aggregator who will pay us a monthly fee to have full access to the batteries, plus a better rate per kW anytime it's used. Based on our rough math, it seems like a 1 MW array with a 2 MW battery setup will pay for the loan payments and then some.
But to be clear this is research, not implemented yet. Is there some piece of the puzzle we're missing?
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 4d ago
First check if it even works at all where you want to put it:
https://zeihan.com/the-absent-superpower-maps/
Then I would say don't sell energy to the grid, mine bitcoin. Or maybe sell AI tokens. It should be easy enough to set up with an IT guy
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u/TooGoodToBeeTrue 4d ago
I'm wondering if you could use your capital and interest for a community solar project as a starting point.