I'm Aaron Graber with Ventrac and today we're on a
solar field using our tractor and tough cut to mow the grass down.
Conceptually, mowing the grass on the solar field is very simple. It just
needs to be cut down. There's really no protocol for the aesthetics or anything
else. The important thing is that all of the grass gets cut down so that it
doesn't grow up into the panels and around the motors if the panels move.
Because of these maintenance needs, these contracts are regularly performed but they're
not performed weekly like some mowing services. Since there's more time in between mowings the
grass is pretty tall when you do get to it. So you need equipment like this to tackle the job.
And a lot of contractors that do this job are using improper equipment now. They're
either using pull behind equipment that the operator has to look behind to see
while they're traveling forward, or they're using traditional landscape
type equipment that's not industrial enough to hold up to this type of work long term.
The risk in using some of this equipment mostly comes in damage to the panels.
By using equipment that's too large or cumbersome to get around you risk cracking panels and these
things are not cheap. One of these panels behind me, these two and a half feet by four foot panels
cost about a thousand dollars to replace. It doesn't take a lot to damage them.
Just one minor bump from a machine can do it. So you have to be very careful and you
want to run equipment that gives you the best chance of protecting those panels.
The articulated steering of the Ventrac makes for a very tight turning radius
and allows maneuverability not just around the rows but between the rows as well.
Something the Ventrac can do that a lot of other equipment can't do is get underneath the panels.
Here we have a difficult setup where we actually have guide wires tensioning horizontally between
the vertical posts. So we can only get in about half of the area
but on a typical solar site that doesn't have horizontal wires,
you'd be able to mow completely underneath these panels and save string trimming time.
Another important thing to talk about with these areas is that they're oftentimes
built on land that's not optimal for anything else. The site we're on today
is too low of elevation for it to be built on within any useful buildings.
So it's a city property that never got maintained more than just mowed maybe once or twice a year.
They came in and put a solar field on it because now it can be a productive asset for the city.
The problem with that is the terrain hasn't changed so it's always very wet in here
after a rain or an early spring or late fall. It also has a lot of ruts in it from when the
installation happened and the Ventrac is a perfect machine to operate in those areas.
Because the Ventrac has a very low ground pressure we're able to operate in areas like this that stay
wet a lot of the year without doing damage to the turf, without creating more ruts,
and without making it harder to do the other maintenance activities in this area.
Additionally, solar sites like this are always surrounded by fences
this is to keep animals or other traffic out and protect the panels as much as possible.
But these also present another maintenance challenge. Mowing near a fence is always
going to leave some string trimming to do unless you're spraying but most municipalities aren't
okay with spraying because they want these sites to be as ecologically low impact as possible.
We have a variety of mower decks that allow you to get as close to
the fence as possible to minimize that string trimming, again, saving labor.
The common theme here is efficiency and time savings. Another way the Ventrac accomplishes
this is the speed of operation. So the maintenance company that happens to be
taking care of this property on a regular basis is using a combination of zero turns,
skid loaders, and string trimmers. They're using the skid loaders more than any of the
other equipment because they're big and they're efficient. When the grass gets nice and tall
the problem is they're not very maneuverable. They also make ruts in the terrain and cause
damage that needs to be corrected later. Where a typical machine would have to stay
in that two to three mile an hour range to keep from abusing the operator too much,
a Ventrac can travel easily at six to seven miles an hour. Sometimes even more if the grass is low
enough. I obviously don't need to explain the math to show that that's at least twice as efficient.
A site like this that normally takes six to seven hours to get the bulk of the mowing done
can easily be cut down to three to three and a half hours with a Ventrac.
Another thing to talk about that we don't have on this site but a lot of solar fields do
is hilly terrain. Again, going back to the fact that solar fields are usually
built on land that's not useful for much else, you'll see them on
hillsides a lot of the time. With our dual wheel kit and very low center of gravity,
the Ventrac machine gives operators exactly the tool they need to tackle terrain like that.
Just like most of the applications we talk about, versatility still comes to play in a solar field.
Even though most of the work you're going to be doing is mowing, and we have a bunch of different
decks to do that in your preferred method. We also have a couple other attachments that make sense.
If you're a maintenance company taking care of panels you might also want to
contract out the cleaning of those panels. While we don't have attachments to wash the
panels which does need done periodically with specialty equipment, we do have high-flow,
high-speed turbine blowers available for the Ventrac and you can blow dust and debris off the
panels. That's a big deal to make sure that the panels are operating as efficiently as possible
because the dirtier they get and the dustier they get, the less effective they are at collecting
the energy from the sun. And of course most contractors that would be doing jobs like this
have other uses for equipment. Those contractors can easily put the tractor
to use on other jobs making them money when they're not working on their solar fields.
As the prevalence of solar fields only grows more popular in every region around the country in the
world, having the proper equipment is only going to be more important as time goes on. The Ventrac
and our attachments is something you definitely want to check out to see if it can help you save
time or save money. Or improve your results and minimize damage to the panels themselves.
For more information on our product and to learn where to demo it and buy it, check us out online
at ventrac.com. Or on our YouTube channel, or other social media. Thanks for watching.