Sheep and solar grazing were the talk of RE+!

September 17, 2024/ASGA

The ASGA Team attended this year’s RE+ renewable energy conference and made a big splash with a live sheep display and the world premiere of our solar grazing documentary film!

With 45,000 people attending this year’s conference, we wanted to make sure folks had a chance to see and understand the benefits of building strong partnerships with solar graziers.

To open the show on Monday, we premiered the first ever solar grazing documentary to a packed audience and everyone loved it!

To get updates on the film and help support our work, I encourage you to

Sign up for updates on the film and to inquire about screenings here: https://solargrazing.org/film/#signup
Join ASGA to support the film, promoting it, and all of our farmer education work: https://solargrazing.org/join/#corporate-membership

870A7840 copy — ASGA’s Senior Director Kevin Richardson introduces the film

The 20-minute documentary tells the moving stories of several solar graziers and how this opportunity has changed their lives. It also captures the story of the recent history of the sheep industry, the struggles of independent American farmers, the value of sheep grazing to solar sites, and, most importantly, the wonderful people who make up ASGA’s members.

An enormous thanks to all of those who participated in the film: Ely Valdez, Chad Raines, Daniel Dotterer, Lexie Hain, Arlo Hark, Caroline Owens, Julie Bishop, Ryan Indart, Amanda Stoffels, and Camren Maierle.

The premiere showed off a near final cut of the film. Once the final cut is edited, we will host screenings and take it to film festivals. We look forward to sharing that with our members and the rest of the world soon! Stay tuned…

870A7836 copy — We had a packed house for the premiere!

You can see over 300 attendees packed the premiere and cocktail reception sponsored by Nextracker and Leeward Renewable Energy (LRE).

870A7850 copy — Solar Grazier Daniel Dotterer and Tucker Gragg from Blueline Productions discuss the film

After the film, ASGA’s own Daniel Dotterer interviewed the film’s director, Tucker Gragg from Blueline Productions, about his introduction to the wild world of solar grazing and why he thought this story was so important to tell. We followed that up with a lively Q&A and networking reception.

The solar industry gets to see the sheep!

870A8131 copy — 5 Suffolk Ewes from Cal Poly Pomona hanging out under an Array tracker outside the convention center in Anaheim, CA.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we did something unprecedented – we brought sheep down to a renewable energy conference.

Our goal was to give the solar industry folks a chance to meet and see the animals that will do the best job managing vegetation on their solar sites.

The 5 beautiful Suffolk ewes we brought to the conference were the talk of the show!

870A8146 copy — Solar Grazier Daniel Dotterer explains grazing sheep on solar sites to excited onlookers

Over two days, we had a constant flow of traffic of people coming by to take pictures of the sheep and talk about solar grazing with us.

Thousands of attendees came by to see the sheep. Many of those folks had never seen sheep up close before. The display generated hundreds and hundreds of conversations about how solar grazing works, its benefits, and how people can make it happen on their sites.

It was important for them to see the animals live and give attendees a chance to chat with the ASGA team there. Daniel Dotterer (Dotterer’s Farm), Jess & Marcus Gray (Gray’s LAMBscaping), Lexie Hain, Cole Bush, and Mary Grikas fielded questions and spread the solar grazing enthusiasm throughout the two days.

Array provided a fantastic modal tracker and solar panels for the sheep to “graze” under. Cal Poly Pomona provided the sheep and were a huge help to pulling this off!

A huge thank you to Cole Bush for making the drive down to help manage the sheep and make this operation possible. RE+ was incredibly kind to host us and facilitate the operation.

In addition to the sheep, we also held two panel discussions about building farmer partnerships and showed off video resources on the Expo hall floor. Each had 40 or more attendees and we generated a lot of interest in creating partnerships.

We want to thank everyone who attended and helped out with the booth. A huge thanks to all of those who supported us, including the RE+ staff (Wade Barton, Lesley Fondren, Gary Thuro, Caroline Roberts, and more!), Cal Poly Pomona, Array Technologies, Cole Bush with Shepherdess Land and Livestock, Nextracker, LRE, the Solar Farm Summit team, Daniel Dotterer, Lexie Hain, Jess Gray, Marcus Gray, Mary Grikas, and Julia Poska.

We hope to do this again and increase the farmer presence at RE+ and other renewable energy conferences as ASGA and farmers continue grow these incredible partnerships.

As Daniel says in our film, there is so much opportunity here.