Lettuce Shine at Our Table Cooperative

The Lettuce Shine solar project, is the first agrivoltaics microgrid in the U.S. Located at Our Table Cooperative Farm in Sherwood, Oregon and funded in part by Portland General Electric customers through PGE’s Renewable Development Fund, the project will allow the farm to grow lettuce and other heat-sensitive crops like lettuce under elevated, moving solar panels from Stracker Solar. Climate change is rapidly making it impossible for the farm to grow salad greens in the summer without shade, and the solar panels will provide that shade while also providing the farm with nearly all its annual electricity usage from the sun.

Prof. Chad Higgins from Oregon State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences will use the project to study the effects of the shading on the crops grown underneath the Stracker towers, and seek to maximize both energy generation and food production. This cutting-edge research follows the successful agrivoltaics research collaboration between OSU and Oregon Clean power Co-op at Solar Harvest.

The system includes 80 kWh of battery storage from Sol-Ark, so the farms lights, refrigerators and freezers will be able to continue operating even during natural disasters, allowing it to continue to provide food for the local community at critical times.

Read the full press release!