Agrovoltaics comes to Iowa - Nick Peterson

Voice: Take a walk with us down memory lane. Or maybe help spark a conversation with a loved one about the way farmers used to sound. With your Amazon device or Alexa app, say Alexa, play country farm sounds and escape to a mid 1900s farm, where they will take a walk during morning chores.

  

Hey, everybody, I'm Paul Yeager, this is the M to M studio in full function here at Iowa PBS, Glad to have you here. Making a few visual changes. For those of you that watch the podcast that comes out each and every Tuesday, you may start to notice some changes again. For those that listen, hopefully it's still the same. Today we are going to discuss a similar topic. But from a different aspect. We're gonna talk about energy, solar energy, specifically with Alliant Energy, a energy company based in Iowa. Nick Peterson, who is their strategic partnerships manager. For Alliant is the guest he's going to sit right here. I'm going to ask him about a new collaboration with Iowa State University in Ames. That is mixing solar panels and agriculture, specifically food production together. It's a term called Agrivoltaics. We've talked about it before on this podcast, and we're doing it again. As we learn about this grant, and research project that's happening, how these two are coming together. We'll get into a little bit of Nick's background, of course, like I always do talk about solar. But really about this partnership between the two. If you have feedback for me, hit me up with an email it's Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.ORG. Reminder, new episodes come out every Tuesday. We love having you tell a friend or share whether you watch or listen, thank you. Here is our conversation. You're kind of a big deal. Before you took your job and came in here. I didn't understand young professional of the year, how that come about.

[Nick Peterson]  I've been lucky enough and fortunate enough to be around some amazing people here in Iowa that have uplifted and empowered me and did so in a few different things, both professionally and personally in the time I've given him the community and so he had back in 2017 I was lucky enough to be honored by the Des Moines registration professional year. Is that a pay? Did you grow up in Des Moines and grew up in Madrid, Iowa. So just just between Ames and Des Moines so farm guy or just small town guy, small town guy, proud small town guy,

[Yeager]  

Madrid Tigers, that's a kind of a big deal. Do you play football for Coach Hinkle?  Everybody did didn't they?

{Peterson} Everybody at Madrid played football for Coach Hinkle. And now and now the new coach Hinkle.

[Yeager] What was your goal as a kid? What were you thinking you would do?

[Peterson] Crazy enough. I wanted to be a school teacher and grew up in Madrid with some great, great educators who went to school to be a teacher in college. And I graduated during the market downturn where the teaching profession wasn't hiring. So went into a little bit different different avenue with the higher education route and actually worked in college athletics for a number of years on the West Coast and was able to kind of learn the ecosystem that is higher education, academic academia, and how to how to work with that due to my interactions out and out in Seattle, and then was lucky enough to come back to Iowa about 10 years ago and work for some nonprofits doing fundraising. And then the local government, helping figure out how to navigate public private partnerships, because that's what I've done since coming out of college is figuring out how to translate the great things that the public sector does and the great things that the private sector does and bring that collaboration together. And that's how I'm here today with you around the line energy.

[Yeager] I was gonna say that's the first time I've even heard the word energy. I haven't heard anything about electricity or solar power or wind energy. I mean, any of that. So how do you bridge partnerships to your employer? 

[Peterson] I would say the first thing is, I'm lucky enough to have some absolutely brilliant coworkers that have helped educate me on The basics around utilities and energy and get me up to speed on, you know, the advancements in rural energy. But then also, you know, having that opportunity to really think about how we handle our relationships, how we handle strategy and how we handle just supporting our communities and doing the right thing. I bring in the other skills that are needed to help translate those visions into reality.

[Yeager] I guess I never asked What did you want to teach? What subject? Social Studies? Okay, so not economics? Not even science?

[Peterson] I love science, So second favorites. Okay. So second favorite set? Of course, yes. 

[Yeager] So your job is to me a lot of science or is not it?

[Peterson] Well, my job directly is to figure out how to connect people to the science. So a little social studies, little social economics, yes. And then it's a little economics. And then it's figuring out how do we bring these relationships together to make sure that the folks that are really good at science, and really good at economics and other things are working together in cross functional groups for success, which, you know, I think going back to education, it's always conveying the right ideas to the right people and helping bring people together and moving and progressing society.

[Yeager] MidAmerican is a company we have a lot of knowledge in, in Market to Market land because of their history with wind turbines. Alliant has been in the renewable game, in what capacity in comparison, I guess to Yeah, to the other power company in Iowa.

[Peterson] Obviously, MidAmerican is a leader in the nation and wind energy. We are, I would say we are fortunate enough to be on the same trajectory in the sense that we are the third largest utility owned wind operator in the nation. So although we aren't at the same level of the sheer volume that MidAmerican has, we are also a leader in renewable energy, especially in wind. And now with the foray into solar, we're continuing to diversify our portfolio.

[Yeager] is it more because of where you're located geographically? Or is it the way that the energy industry is going that Alliant has dipped into this?

[Peterson] Great question, I would say it's a mixture of both one it's doing the right thing for our customers and our communities. And investing in alternative sources of energy just makes good since when you look at fuel costs, and you look at different things, we've got to do what's right for our customers, and what's going to give them the biggest benefit long term. So that's where the vision for adding renewables in whether it was a couple of decades ago, when we started our wind program, to now when we've you know, doing solar battery storage, continuing wind, it's continuing to look at what's the best thing for our customers long term, we've been a company in some form for over 100 years, we plan to be here for another 100. But it's also we to do so we have to do what's right for our customers and our communities. And then I would say in terms of an energy perspective, there's a lot of cost mechanisms that make renewable energy, a really smart decision for us as a company

[Yeager] I'm listening to you in my head is thinking about all this infrastructure that you had set up in that 100 years was coal fired plants, or some type of power plant to generate the electricity to send down the line to send into my home and to use. Now you're changing that infrastructure around and you have to find new ways when Turbans are by the way, do you say wind turbines or wind turbines? Good question, because I was getting in trouble sometimes when I say it differently, do you ever? 

[Peterson] I don't have a preference, but I'm also probably not the one to ask that question within our company.

[Yeager] What what I what? Why I asked that is because you have to set up now I mean, when transmission is when energy is created has to be transmitted somewhere. Now with solar being created, it has to be transmitted, and what's the difference in setting up that infrastructure? And that cost to figuring out where new projects come on the best benefit customers? 

[Peterson] Our renewables team takes a ton of time and effort and due diligence to find the right spots and define the right places to allocate our renewable energy. Actually, some places that make really good spots are where we've turned our old coal plants, retired old coal plants and turn them into renewable energy generation assets. We're looking at that as a great place. Just because you already have the infrastructure built, it allows us to do it at a cost that's a lot lower for our customers.

[Yeager] So use existing lines to get to those plants. Is that what you mean to or just the plants themselves? And you've put panels all over those? 

[Peterson] Yes, plants? Well, so one of the projects that a partner company is working on right now is the Dwayne Arnold site pilot, where the nuclear plant was no longer a viable option to generate energy. They're in the process of decommissioning and tearing down that plant. And, in turn, we're putting in a 400, I believe it's 400 megawatt solar facility there. And next era is developing and creating that and Alliant Energy has announced that we will purchase that from NextEra, once they finished the construction of the site, and we will own and operate it. That's a great example of leveraging existing infrastructure for all that, that transmission lines, all the substations that were built to handle that nuclear energy power plant is now going to be able to be utilized to facilitate renewable energy in that area. And allow those infrastructure costs to not be burdened or kind of lost to to the fact that the nuclear plant can no longer produce energy.

[Yeager] So you have a 40 acre site, for example, I mean, I'm just roughly guessing what that might be. Now, instead of it having nuclear, whatever, it has solar, correct, whatever in the spot, and you're sending out the power all throughout the veins that are around that area, I get it. Okay. So you bring up a point that I think we're trying to get to using AI people who question all the time in Market to Market about like, I don't want a wind turbine on my farm, I don't want a solar array cutting up this big farm, I don't want. So I asked some of these people, why don't you just you? Why aren't their solar panels on top of all of these big distribution warehouses or facility, you know, large scale buildings that just whereas that, that thinking to me is all kind of the same of I don't want it, but I don't want to see it.

[Peterson] You know, it all depends on the user in the customer who's electing to support some of our programs. You know, rooftop is definitely a viable option in certain cases. But when you're getting into utility scale, you the ground mount is a much more reliable and much more feasible construction option. When you're looking at going up to the one megawatt and above scale, scalability of renewable energy rooftop makes a little lessons now there are times where it does. But it's finding the right options. And you know, I'm lucky enough, we have a great renewables team that kind of goes and again, does that due diligence to figure out what the right what the right context is, right, the right support is to scale up our solar projects to the right level and figure out the right space for it.

[Yeager] Because in some cases, couldn't just use some of that power right there on site can't can I figure out a way to invert what comes from the sun and It powers my assembly line? Yeah, potentially,

[Peterson] There are companies that are doing behind the meter solar projects with, with other third party solar vendors to do stuff like that. And so there are definitely opportunities for folks to do it. We at Alliant, don't do any of the net metering because of being a regulated utility. We focus on what's going to be beneficial for the entire community, and all of our customer base rather than just one singular customer.

[Yeager] Some of your customers are country customers, some of them are city customers, and you have to figure out when there's land and with that 40 acres. I go back to that number. It's an easy one to talk about. But I've got this 40 acres that seems prime for solar, but it also could be used for agriculture. Tell me that term. Where did it come about? And how did you get involved with it?

[Peterson] Sure. SoAgrivoltaics  is the process of leveraging the land underneath their solar panels for farming or gardening? I would say we started our project about three and a half years ago. And it really came from a pragmatic decision around environmental and sustainability goals that Iowa State University had to really focus on how do they make themselves more sustainable and meet goals that President Winterstein had in place, but also it was a look at their college of agriculture. Leadership and them saying, you know, hey, the ag industry is gonna get it is getting a ton of push from their supply chain to be more sustainable. And as the leading university in agriculture, that Iowa State is, we need to be on the forefront of thinking about how are we being sustainable in our practices. And so they reached out to me and just said, Hey, you've been working with Iowa State for the last couple years on some really neat initiatives. And Alliant Energy is known for their renewable energy practices. Where there is a collaboration opportunity, and they specifically had some initiatives going on with their research farms, they just added the camp feed mill not too long ago. They have new Turkey facilities, new facilities across their research farms portfolio. And so they had an interest in whether we could serve renewable energy to those farms? And how could we leverage programs or products that Alliant Energy can do as a regulated utility to support the university and those sustainability goals? So that's, that's where the initial start was, was how do we get renewable energy to the farms so that they can start to talk about how it demonstrates from there? You know, the greatest thing about being around really, really smart people, both at Alliant Energy and at Iowa State University, is to get them in a room and say, what's the possibility that can happen and seeing people shoot for the moon, with the hope to land among the stars? And I think, you know, I think what we've got going on with Iowa State is a great demonstration of just having an open mind and being both pragmatic and optimistic about how this can benefit our customers, our communities, the state of Iowa as a whole and in the nation as a whole to be really a an opportunity to showcase how renewable energy and agriculture work together.

[Yeager] You said Alliance got involved with this three years ago? You had the idea. It is not new. The idea? Where did the idea come from?

[Peterson] Yeah, the idea is not new. It's been going on, there's a lot of egg roll takes being done over in Europe. Really great showcase pieces. There's places here in the United States that are doing it, especially out west in the southwest. So one of the projects that we looked at both Iowa State and Alliant Energy for some support, as we started to build this up was Jack's solar garden in Colorado. They've done some work within REL, the National Renewable Energy Lab. And so we got some, some really good understanding of what's been happening. But there's nothing in you know, the breadbasket of the United States that really showed, hey, this can be done in a fashion in Iowa, or in the mid upper midwest, it all we've seen it is in more arable land, that's not as great for crop production. So it was how do we look at this? And how do we tailor this to support Iowa farmers and the ag industry here in Iowa? And how does it support the renewable energy growth that that will be needed for both the ag industry to continue to their competitive advantage, and for us to continue to look at how we become more sustainable as a as a state, because

[Yeager] Iowa doesn't have a huge blueberry production. We have some bees, and we have some berries, but those aren't the big crops. And that's what a lot of these arrays that are multi, the Agrivoltaics, that's what it is in Europe, in some places. That's, or are there goats that will eat a lot. That's a whole lot of stuff that you need. So tell me where that thinking has developed in this three years. Where, what's Ames? What are they doing and Ames? What are they going to put under these and around these panels?

[Peterson] Yeah, so what we ended up doing is we created a partnership with our program called the customer hosted solar program. So Iowa State leases the land, it's about 10 acres to ally energy we've built and developed the solar array as a customer hosted program, so the energy goes back onto the grid to support all of our customers. And we take on the capital costs, and we do this. So Iowa State doesn't have to incur it. We were lucky enough to continue to get to talk about that agriculture tech piece and how Iowa State can leverage that that ground underneath to do the farming We've looked specifically at high value crops, so we aren't doing row crops like corn and soybeans, not to say that there might not be some opportunities in the future to look at row crops. But we took kind of what's been done in Europe and Colorado and other parts of the world and said, Well, how do we mesh this? And again, for our utility scale, you know, this is about a 10 acre site. So it's not that we are not taking a full farm out of production. In this case, we've got because it's doing research, we designed this to give Iowa State the ability to do academic research that can be published, but also to be functional to be able to say, What could a normal farmer do or what could Alliant do with other partners across the state? And how do we make sure that we're doing it as effectively and as efficiently as possible? So the project with Iowa State, we've got five crops that Iowa State will be growing under the panels. They're going to be growing strawberries, raspberries, peppers, broccoli, and summer squash. And then they'll also be doing pollinators. And we will have an aviary on site. So we'll have some beekeeping and honey production as well. So you know, when I look at it, we've got fruit, you got vegetables, and you got some honey, to sweeten things up. I think we'll have a pretty good tasting menu after harvest comes next summer, growing food, growing food.

[Yeager] So you say high value crops? That's what those are. So land wise, are these 10 acres that that is the initial start of this research? What was it used for before row crop production? So do you have a baseline of like economic, this is what this produced on a 10 year scale?

[Peterson]  

Yes. And so I will state a part of their, their doe award that they received. They have economists on the research team that are focusing on what it is, what the land made in just row crop production, what it's going to make, in lease payments from Alliant Energy to lease the space. Plus what can be done underneath the panels and what that value is, say if they're selling those commodities at say, a farmers market or back to vegetable or fruit vendors.

[Yeager] A lot of the issue always with those crops that you mentioned is the labor side. So how do you figure in the labor that's needed now to maintain squash and strawberries? And in these products?

[Peterson] You know, that's a great question. You know, right now, we're leaning on Iowa State to kind of continue to navigate those waters and figure out what that is. Luckily, they have a lot of students up there, a lot of graduate assistants that will be helping the researchers kind of identify that, you know, we have in their plans with the DOD, they have plans to open it up to groups who may not be may have barriers to access in the agriculture industry. You know, land is very expensive here in Iowa when you're talking about farming. And so I think, you know, one of the fun parts about this and rewarding parts is looking at are there ways to leverage this partnership to provide access to groups that would normally not have access to good fertile farmland to grow high value crops. And so that's another thing that we're still in the infancy stages of the grant and of the partnership to kind of announce who we're working with or anything like that. But there are plans to bring in groups that would be generally limited or barrier to access to agriculture to the agriculture industry, and how do we help provide that access through these types of innovative partnerships?

[Yeager] And my understanding is what is grown under these 10 acres is going to the ISU dining hall?

[Peterson] Well, that was the thought, one of the thoughts that you know, the horticulture groups could sell it to farmers markets or sell it to local produce vendors. Because I'm not growing in line, energy is not growing it I leave those details up to Iowa State of what they do with it. 

[Yeager] you'd said they were doing some research, what is it that they're more interested in? Are they interested in how efficient a solar array can be? Or are they more interested in how bountiful raspberries can be or how the harmony is between the two?

[Peterson] Paul, that's that's actually where the greatest part of this project is, is that we're answering not just one question, but all of these questions and what's exciting about this partnership is it's not only Alliant Energy, and I say the College of Agriculture at Iowa State, this is not just a mere one to one transaction. This is collaborative across disciplines at Iowa State, we've got the Electric Power Research Center at Iowa State. So engineering teams are working on the electric power production. What does? What does the difference between the growth of broccoli and the growth of raspberries due to energy production? These are bifacial panels, which means that they take in sun on both sides. And so what we've learned initially from Israel is that any kind of vegetation under the panels actually helps cool the panels off and helps them except more energy production. So that's a part of one of the questions we're going to ask is what crop actually gives those panels better production? But then also what grows? Best under those panels? Are we going to see, you know, strawberries grow better, what kind of microclimates are under there. And an IOC is going to be evaluating that. And then like we talked about the economic value, what's the economic value or benefit to the ag industry, into the, to the utilities industry to continue these types of collaborations?

[Yeager] Because you can find the broccoli is the best for an example. That's a lot of broccoli that we might not be eating. So you have to find a market for it and the end, and that's all I guess, part of that balance of you might have to have 10 crops, and then it gets to be harder to figure out what works best and where. So I guess I'm gonna ask what the bosses would ask, what does victory look like in this? What does success look like in this partnership? In this research, not this partnership.

[Peterson] So I think the research is the success would be to just get a better understanding, there is no baseline of what the best stuff is for our environment, our climate here and in Iowa. So even just getting a baseline of understanding how this works? And what are the best? What are the what's the best information we can get? If we want to expand and grow this type of operation or continue to do this work? What's it, what's it going to look like? And that's why having, you know, an entity like Iowa State doing this with, again, that cross discipline, research team, we feel very, very lucky and appreciative to have that partnership to be able to know that we have some of the best in the world working on answering those questions.

[Yeager] You mentioned, you look to Colorado for ideas, where are other partnerships like this one, research and private entity working together across the country to find out it's different in Maine versus South Carolina versus Nevada?

[Peterson] Yeah, so the DoD did grant some projects all across the United States, in the agricultural tech sector this last year, Iowa State in the light energies project was actually the largest grant that was given out by the DOD for this utility scale Agrivoltaics. There's not a ton going on. There are some projects here and there across the United States that are doing some great work. But for a regulated utility, and the university to be doing this work, we are really, in a new frontier, and we are on a precipice of excitement in this area. There's not a lot of utilities that are working, cross collaboratively like this on Agrivoltaics. There's some other projects around but I would say ours is one of the first and really kind of doing this, this in depth collaboration. 

[Yeager] You’re the blueprint for somebody else, we hope to be yes. So there isn't anybody to call, Hey, they're going to, excuse me, calling you. 

[Peterson] Yeah, and that's that, that's the excitement, I think here that we have as a utility is we see this as an opportunity to be an industry leader, and to really say, Okay, let's live our values at Alliant Energy to be bold and think beyond and be innovative. And, you know, I'm lucky enough we have some amazing leaders at our company that have really empowered myself and others across our company to say, hey, let's, let's look at this. Let's try to see what we can do to make it happen and how can I will be the, you know, the leader in this in the future,

[Yeager] How high off the ground is, as this panel sits, what are we talking here?

[Peterson] Oh, great question. So we have so because this site is unique because we are working with Iowa State, we designed it in a way to give our researchers some different variabilities. So we have two different heights and we have two different types of solar panels installed. So we have a tracker system which tracks the sun and moves with the sun. And then we have the fixed tilt, which is kind of what you would kind of normally think about when you think about solar, ground mounted solar. So we have both of those. But then on top of that we have different heights. So we have industry link height in the fix, which is two and a half feet, high off the leading edge, and then five feet off the ground for the leading edge, which is the lowest portion. And then on the thick, or on the tracker side, we have the industry standard, which is about five feet off the ground, and then we have some taller ones that are about eight feet off the ground.

[Yeager] At five feet, can we get a cow underneath. But we can't get a tractor 10 feet, we can't quite get a good sized tractor underneath there. So is there any thought that at some point during this research, there'll be a livestock component added to this? 

[Peterson] We've discussed it with Iowa State in preliminary discussions about sheep is probably the only real livestock that would be feasible. You mentioned goats earlier, goats are terrible for solar facilities. They eat everything, I think they will eat the wiring off the solar array. So goats are not a great fit, sheep have been successful. And they've shown that in both Europe and other parts of the United States that sheep can be really good grazers in solar farms, cows don't just due to the weight of a cow in the potential damage that could happen. We don't see this as a facility and just the space to get cattle around. I don't see cows being a viable option in this facility, not to say that they couldn't be in other facilities. But right now we're really focused on the vegetation focused on the beekeeping aspect. And you know, down the road, there may be an opportunity to bring sheep in the winter. We're not focused on that at this time. 

[Yeager] Are there areas where maybe the land rating isn't as high as it could be? I'm thinking of a bad side hill that erodes a lot that has a really good southern exposure to it. It Do you see that as an opportunity for an array that can work in a partnership like this? Or is that just a straight up? That's where a solar line should go?

[Peterson] Again, I think Alliant Energy, I'll kind of reflect back to my renewable energy development team, they do a lot of due diligence to find the right sites. And again, not every not every piece of land is the right land to do it. I'm not an expert in that. So when they usually dictate to us, hey, we need certain variabilities that are going to be beneficial. I know we are very collaborative, in trying to find those things and trying to be a good partner to our communities and to our customers to find the right sites, and be as collaborative and flexible as possible when we build them.

[Yeager] Let's get one more on the record and make you uncomfortable. What about the side of interstates that could be used for the sides of roads? Where there's high traffic? There's transmission lines, there's already? I mean, what's this? What's to say that you can't put this type of partnership together to make that side of the road a little better?

[Peterson] Yeah, I think I think the biggest thing, I would say just this is not my expert opinion. But just my thought process, when I'm thinking of risk is just, you know, we have winter weather and cars go off and ditches a lot and stuff like that. Not something you want to worry about when you've got, you know, seven figures worth of energy generation equipment. So though it may be an opportunity, maybe a few layers out from the interstate, there may be some opportunities. You see that with wind turbines across your ad in other parts of the state, but solar is a viable, but maybe you don't want it that close to the roads just due to some safety concerns and just the risks of of what what a solar developer would take on to put a mat close to moving traffic, even when you look at our sites we have, you know, we have deer fence up to keep deer out and to keep, you know, keep folks out to put that kind of infrastructure up right next to vehicles moving at a fast pace may not be the most conducive though there may be opportunities if it's slightly off the path.

[Yeager] You’ve been on I-35 enough in winter to know that yes, those semis can sometimes and cars can really head up that ditch no matter what the physical is. That's just one of those solar concerns because I'm guessing when you have to put that hand off, of trying to get a community to agree to something. And to show them the benefits of why this is you do have to. There are questions like my ridiculous ones that come up to you all the time. 

[Peterson] There's always questions. But you know what I found, in my time with Alliant Energy and working with our communities, we have some amazing communities that are always looking for ways to make them better. And oftentimes, this becomes a differentiating factor for our communities to have entities, whether it's a solar solar array or a wind farm, we have these, most of the times we have communities calling us asking for them. And it's our hard part, or I should say our renewables team hard part, to try to decide where the best spots are to place them.

[Yeager] it's good to be in demand. Yes. Yeah. How long is this project going to work with? 

[Peterson] The DOE grant is four years.

[Yeager] Okay. So four years, we end the four years we'll have. We're going to find some things out how soon before you think you find something out that encourages or maybe makes you change paths for those last two years? 

[Peterson] Well, I think there's Yeah, I would say I would say the first couple of harvests will give us a really good understanding of things. You know, the nice part is, is we have live, you know, live active data analytics on the site. So, you know, we'll be able to see progress fairly quickly. And then be able to continue to compare that and analyze that data over the time that we grow there. So I would say we'll probably know within the first couple of years about what some trends are, what some best practices will be, and then be able to continue to work on that. And I know, Iowa State's encouraged the solar farm will be there for at least the next 20 years. So I think, you know, our focus is how do we continue to take the work that we're doing over the next four years and make sure that it's replicable, that we can continue to do it long beyond and maybe it's figuring out what those next crops are, or those next advancements in technology are that are going to give our ag industry the competitive advantage that it needs.

[Yeager] Then we'll have you back and we can discuss it even further. All right, Nick, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. My thanks again to Nick Peterson for his time from Alliant Energy. If you have an email that you'd like to send me, MarkettoMarket@IowaPBS.org is the best email to use for the whole team. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.