First Agrivoltaic Cranberry Harvests in Massachusetts — SkimNews
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- DEI built the Black Cat project in Plymouth and the Ring Road project in Kingston — two Massachusetts cranberry bogs that had stopped making financial sense to farm — combining cranberry cultivation, community solar, and battery storage, with solar land-lease income making it viable to restart farming on the long-idle bogs.
- The construction required panels raised 10 feet above the ground with more than 18 feet of clear space between rows to accommodate farm machinery and let sunlight reach the vines; crews also swapped black protective mats (which absorbed too much heat) for white ones.
- The timeline stretched to roughly eight months — about twice a comparable conventional solar project — because the soft, peaty soil and established cranberry vines couldn't tolerate heavy equipment rolling through.
- Greenbacker Renewables owns both sites: Black Cat pairs 1 MW of solar with 2.7 MWh of battery storage, while Ring Road carries 4.4 MW of solar and a 13.5 MWh battery.
- The arrangement pays both sides — the landowner collects solar lease income, and farmer Iain Ward, who helped design the construction details, is paid to manage them plus earns from selling the berries.
- DEI's October announcement celebrates what it calls the first-ever agrivoltaic cranberry harvests, dated by cofounder Prateek Tare's earlier account to fall 2025; the release does not include yield figures or comparisons to panel-free cranberry growing.
Why it matters: For cranberry farmers whose bogs stopped covering costs, solar land leases now make the operation viable again — but DEI's announcement gave no yield data, leaving other farmers without the comparison they need to judge whether panels help, hurt, or leave crop output unchanged. Cranberry prices alone weren't enough to justify farming these bogs; now the solar lease fills the gap.
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