ASGA Call 75: 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, we’re joined by Rob Schultz from Invenergy’s Vegetation Management team, who will discuss how they develop their vegetation and soil management plans. He’ll cover 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 will go 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.

Speaker

Rob Schultz is a part of Invenergy’s well established Vegetation Management team, which focuses on supporting their utility-scale solar portfolio across the country. He applies his experience and lessons learned from his time as a project manager for an ecological restoration firm based out of Minnesota where he planned, implemented, and managed large-scale, revegetation projects across the Midwest. Now at Invenergy, Rob oversees the development of Vegetation and Soil Management Plans (VSMPs) for each project, ensuring a proactive and science-based approach where proper revegetation efforts are produced prior to construction. Additionally, he applies his field experience to working with the project and asset management teams to ensure that the VSMPs are executed in a manner that allow for robust vegetative communities to thrive within Invenergy’s portfolio.