this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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This one actually grinds my gears and it is too popular around here:
This keeps them from having to run a weed trimmer around thousands of supports. Weed trimmers are the most annoying and time consuming part of lawn care.
Have grazing animals on natural meadows instead of artificially sown lawn and you'll not only have the trimming taken care of but also support a variety of plant and animal life under your panels. Sheep and bunnies for example are ideal for the job, don't you think RamRabbit :-)
There is a parking lot and what appears to be multi-level parking garage right behind the panels. Ain't nobody putting goats here. The options are: pay to weed trim around thousands of supports on a regular basis or pay to gravel once.
Goats aren't incompatible with urban environments, especially if they're only brought in to graze every month or so.
Goats are however incompativle with many solar deployments because they will climb up on top of the panels and cause trouble for no other reason than they can (goats are lovable assholes like that)
Why is weed trimming around the supports necessary?
To not make your commercial area look dumpy (there is a parking lot and what appears to be a multi-level parking garage right behind the panels). The owner of this commercial area isn't going to spend 6-digits on panels just to allow their 7-digit commercial area to look dumpy.
I mean the one in the field.
Unfortunately they usually do it on farmland around here, when they could easily go the agrivoltaics route. They would only need to raise it a meter or two and let the sheep roam around doing the trimming for them
Depending on location, it would have been cheaper to have those posts raised/reinforced in the first place instead of buying and hauling all that gravel