ASGA Call 75 Replay: Digging into Vegetation and Soil Management Planning for Solar

Proper vegetation and soil management planning on solar sites is key to good land stewardship and setting up a project for successful vegetation cover. With the application of industry leading revegetation practices to prioritize soils, vegetation establishment and success, solar site development can have positive impacts on the foundation of these facilities with regards to soil health and the local ecology. The risks of getting this step wrong include soil erosion, weed proliferation, local community issues, among others.

For this month’s call, Rob Schultz from Invenergy’s Vegetation Management team discussed how they develop their vegetation and soil management plans. He covered the path from development through operations and the best management practices they have been using to support vegetative success on their projects. These key aspects will include soil fertility testing, seed mixture design, pre-construction seeding, in construction activities and the maintenance phase during operations.

Preparing a site with grazing in mind can have big benefits for solar graziers and the vegetation management process. Rob went over what they have been doing when planning for these grazing specific projects from a utility scale developers’ perspective. This includes the benefits as well as challenges that go into moving forward on this vegetation maintenance approach.

After Rob’s presentation, we were joined by Briana Beck, Energy O&M Project Supervisor – Vegetation Management at MNL, who talked about the benefits for land management of proper site preparation and what can go wrong.

March 13th, 2024

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