Ag Solar on Agnomy

Solar pencils out best for pumps that run heavily through the irrigation season, since pumping is often a farm's single largest electric load. Because pumps sit idle in wet years and the off-season, net metering aggregation, which credits multiple meters from one array, is usually what makes the investment work. Pairing solar with efficient pumps improves the return further.

Under current rules the payback period often hovers around ten years, longer than it was under older net metering. The 30 percent federal tax credit and accelerated depreciation meaningfully shorten that timeline. Actual payback depends on pump horsepower, annual kilowatt-hour use, and how much power is consumed onsite versus exported.

Net metering aggregation, or NEMA, lets one solar array offset the load from multiple meters on attached, adjacent, or contiguous parcels, such as a pump, shop, and home. Credits are trued up annually rather than monthly, which fits agriculture's seasonal energy swings. It is often the key to making farm solar profitable.

NEM 3.0 cut the value of exported solar credits by roughly 75 percent, so excess power sent to the grid now earns far less. This makes sizing the system to onsite use, and sometimes adding battery storage, more important than overbuilding for export. Solar still offsets retail-rate consumption during pumping, which is where most of the savings come from.