West Lafayette, Indiana-based Emergent Solar Energy has completed a slate of nine on-farm agrivoltaics solar projects for egg producer Handsome Brook Farms.

Located across Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, the portfolio of nine projects totals 579.7 kW, according to officials from Purdue Research Park, the headquarters of Emergent Solar Energy. Additionally, the projects will offset about 668 metric tons of CO2 annually, the research foundation says.

The projects will generate on-site power for Handsome Brook Farms, directly lowering the operation’s electrical utility bills in a move that the company says is an investment in small family farms throughout the lower Midwest. Josiah Troyer, a Handsome Brook Farms producer from Sugarcreek, Ohio, says his project’s results have already exceeded his expectations.

“From the beginning, I have been extremely pleased with what we accomplished with Handsome Brook Farms and Emergent Solar Energy,” he says. “Their teams stayed in constant communication and focused on the specifics of our farm to develop, design, procure, deliver and install a solar system that reduced our yearly electric bill by 74.23%. Since it was placed in service, the system has maintained 100% uptime and solar production.”

Energy costs are spiking across the country, thanks to AI data centers and increased utility electrification. The rising tide of the agrivoltaics trend in the U.S. is hoping to cut some of those costs for farmers and rural residents alike.

Easing agricultural pressures

Agricultural producers are facing “growing pressure,” the research firm says, not only to improve operational efficiency, but preserve farm profitability. The Emergent Solar Energy portfolio is taking an infrastructural approach to help solve that problem in the long-term.

“On-farm solar has moved from a sustainability gesture to a core capital decision for agricultural producers,” says Jeremy Lipinski, founder and CEO of Emergent Solar Energy. “Across these nine Handsome Brook Farms projects in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, we deployed on-site energy infrastructure that converts rising, unpredictable utility operational expense into a fixed, owned capital expenditure asset. As egg and livestock production continues to electrify, on-site solar is the most direct lever producers have to protect margins and control their long-term cost of energy.”

The projects serve other energy-based functions as well, Purdue says. In addition to reducing dependence on utility grid power, the project portfolio aims to improve long-term cost predictability for energy, as well as advancing sustainability goals for Handsome Brook Farms. All of this is in service of taking leadership in agricultural energy innovation, the firm says.

“More producers and food manufacturers are treating on-site energy generation as a strategic asset rather than a utility expense,” says Zacaria Martinez, a commercial business development officer at Emergent Solar Energy. “Across the Handsome Brook Farms portfolio, we delivered nine solar systems totaling 579.7 kilowatts, each engineered to the individual farm’s load profile and completed on time and on budget.”

Tags: agrivoltaics, commercial, commercial and industrial, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, project