Dominion Energy pilots beekeeping program at Buckingham County solar farm
any opponents of solar energy have said that calling small-scale projects “solar farms” is a misnomer.
But Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest public utility, is putting the farm into solar farm with the addition of agricultural elements to existing solar projects.
Dominion recently launched a pilot program at its Black Bear Solar array that will house tens of thousands of Italian honey bees on the 13-acre site. It’s the first of its kind in Virginia, with only a smattering of similar programs at sites across the country.
“We’re thrilled to be able to have another use on this land that’s agricultural, and keeps this land essentially in Virginia’s farming community,” Dominion Energy spokesman Tim Eberly told The Daily Progress on a tour of the solar project tucked away in rural Buckingham County near the town of Dillwyn about halfway between Scottsville and Farmville. “It’s a great pairing.”
A sign warns visitors that there are active beehives on the premises at Dominion Energy’s Black Bear Solar farm in Buckingham County, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024.
Black Bear Solar went online in 2023 after Dominion took over Charlottesville-based Hexagon Energy’s 1.6-megawatt project that produces enough energy to power 400 households.
Once overseeing the solar farm, Dominion reached out to Chuck Burden, founder and beekeeper of Midlothian-based Mountain House Apiaries, to see if he’d be interested in connecting the solar farm to his network of hives across the commonwealth.
“The main objective of the honeybee pilot project is to help increase the pollinator population, which has been on the decline worldwide for several decades now,” said Eberly.
Solar panels absorb light at Dominion Energy’s Black Bear Solar farm in Buckingham County on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024.
Black Bear Solar’s four hives, housing a total of 180,000 bees, will also benefit nearby flora and fauna, he said.
That is especially beneficial to Buckingham County, given the locality boasts nearly 80,000 acres of farmland and more than 400 farms, according to the Central Virginia Land Conservancy. Prior to bringing in the honeybees, Burden conducted multiple surveys in the area to see if his honeybees would make good neighbors — and ensuring nearby farms do not use harmful pesticides.
One key benefit of housing an apiary within a solar farm, according to Eberly, is that the tall, wire fence enclosing the perimeter of the site also serves as a means of protecting the honeybees from one of their primary predators in Virginia: black bears. The fact that the Buckingham County solar farm is named after the animal is a coincidence; Hexagon Energy christened the solar farm several years ago, unaware of the future pilot program.
Beehives sit next to solar panels at Dominion Energy’s Black Bear Solar farm in Buckingham County on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024.
Burden has evaluated Black Bear Solar as capable of sustaining up to 24 hives. With that in mind, he plans to double the number of hives to eight next spring. On average, each of the hives produces up to 200 pounds of honey annually — though the beekeeper has promised to collect only the surplus, amounting to anywhere between 40 to 80 pounds.
At the Mountain House Trading Company shop in Nelson County just north of Nellysford, customers can purchase an abundance of honey-based products, including soaps, mead, beer, maple syrup and vinegar, that Burden infuses with the harvest from the 10 apiaries he maintains across Virginia.
“It’s been very exciting for the company to go down this road and to develop any number of agricultural uses that we can add to the land,” Eberly said.
Bees come and go from a hive, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, at Dominion Energy’s Black Bear Solar farm in Buckingham County.
Given the attraction of installing clean energy projects in rural areas with an abundance of land, solar developers have taken to incorporating agrivoltaics: the practice of using an area for both solar energy and some form of agricultural production. In most cases, this involves allowing sheep to graze between solar panels — something Dominion began to explore last year with six of its solar farms.
Solar farm developers often emphasize the agrivoltaic components among other community benefits of their proposals when going through the long and, oftentimes, contentious ordeal of securing a special use permit from local governments. Residents in opposition to solar farms frequently claim the developments don’t align with the rural nature of their homes and sacrifice farmland in the process of construction.
Eberly said it is too early to tell if the addition of the apiaries will make future clean energy projects more digestible for rural communities where solar farms frequently faces backlash, but Dominion is currently vetting other sites to assess their suitability for the program. He also mentioned the public utility is beginning to consider a program that will make it possible for local farmers to plant crops within solar farm sites.
Dominion Energy spokesman Tim Eberly looks at the beehives at Dominion Energy’s Black Bear Solar farm in Buckingham County on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024.
“We’re following up on the sheep pilot program, which has been very exciting, and we consider a great success. This is just another agricultural use that we can add to the land and get more out of the land,” said Eberly. “This is clean energy that we’re generating here, and very environmentally friendly of course, with another very environmentally friendly use to it.”
Dominion’s acquisition of Black Bear Solar allowed the utility to remain in compliance with the Virginia Clean Economy Act of 2020, which requires the state’s “Phase II Utilities” — Dominion and Appalachian Power Co. — to direct 23% of their power into the electrical grid from renewable sources. The historic legislation aims for the commonwealth’s Phase II utility sector to reach zero carbon emissions by 2045, a goal that has reshaped how Dominion approaches energy generation, according to Eberly.
“About 10 years ago, we didn’t have a single Dominion-owned solar panel, and now, we have more than 60 of them across the state that essentially power more than 650,000 homes,” he said. “Over the next 25 years, we are going to be developing enough solar to power up to 6 million homes. … We’ve gone from zero to 60 in the last decade in terms of solar farms around the whole state.”
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