On a cranberry bog in Kingston, Massachusetts, this fall’s harvest happened under rows of solar panels mounted about ten feet overhead. It’s the second season the crop and the panels have shared the same patch of wetland, making this one of the first working cranberry bog solar sites anywhere in the country. The company behind the project calls its two Massachusetts sites the first in the country, maybe the world, to grow a working cranberry crop beneath an operating solar array.
Here’s what’s verified. Distributed Energy Infrastructure, known as DEI, built two cranberry bog solar projects in Kingston and Plymouth on land owned by the clean energy investor Greenbacker Renewables. Canary Media reported the story on Nov. 4, 2026, and Electrek independently confirmed the project names and specs in an October report. The panels sit well above the berries. The bogs keep producing cranberries underneath them.
How You Grow Cranberries Under a Solar Array
The two projects have their own names. Ring Road, in Kingston, pairs a 4.4-megawatt solar array with a 13.5-megawatt-hour battery. Black Cat, in Plymouth, is smaller: a 1-megawatt array with a 2.7-megawatt-hour battery. Those figures come from DEI’s own announcement and from Electrek’s reporting, not from an independent engineering audit.
| Project | Town | Solar Capacity | Battery Storage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ring Road | Kingston, MA | 4.4 MW | 13.5 MWh |
| Black Cat | Plymouth, MA | 1 MW | 2.7 MWh |
Source: DEI company figures, reported by Electrek, Oct. 16, 2026.
Building over an active bog took real engineering work. The panels sit on single-axis trackers that tilt to follow the sun, raised roughly 10 feet up so cranberry harvesting equipment can still pass underneath. Electrek reports the rows sit more than 18 feet apart, wider than a standard solar farm, to leave room for pickers and machinery. Wiring runs overhead instead of underground, since soggy bog soil doesn’t hold buried cable the way dry farmland does. Pile foundations had to go deeper than the usual 8 to 10 feet to stay stable in wet ground. Construction took about eight months, roughly twice as long as a conventional ground-mounted solar project, according to Electrek.
Why Cranberry Bog Solar Appeals to Farmers
Greenbacker bought this land from cranberry growers who were leaving the business, Canary Media reported. That matters because cranberry bogs carry a legal status most farmland doesn’t. They’re protected wetlands. A farmer can’t just sell a fallow bog for a housing development or a strip mall the way they might sell an old cornfield, Canary Media notes. The land stays a bog whether or not anyone is actively farming it.
That protection cuts both ways. It keeps the wetland from being paved over, but it also leaves owners with fewer ways to make the land pay for itself once cranberry prices get tight. Solar leases and power purchase payments give bog owners a second income stream without taking the land out of agricultural or wetland use. Greenbacker hired Iain Ward, a longtime local cranberry farmer, to manage the growing operations. He put it plainly to Canary Media: “This is a farm viability opportunity.” DEI co-founder Prateek Tare called the two projects a proof of concept. He told Canary Media, “We are literally proving it can be done.”
It’s not the only place farmers and solar developers are testing this kind of shared land use. In Big Lake, Minnesota, a solar garden now leases rows to beginning vegetable farmers, including immigrant growers, instead of cranberry pickers. The crops and the setup differ, but the underlying bet is the same: land can host solar panels and still feed people.
What Cranberry Bog Solar Means for Your Power Bill
Both Ring Road and Black Cat sell their power through a community solar model, meaning nearby households and businesses can subscribe for a discount on their electric bill instead of installing their own rooftop panels. Canary Media’s reporting doesn’t give a subscriber count or a specific savings figure for either site, so treat any dollar estimate you see elsewhere as unconfirmed until DEI or Greenbacker publishes one.
Massachusetts has offered solar incentives since 2001, and in 2018 it became the first state to add a financial bonus specifically for dual-use, or agrivoltaic, solar. Under the state’s incentive structure, as Canary Media describes it, a solar array between 1 and 5 megawatts earns a base rate of 23.17 cents per kilowatt-hour. An agrivoltaic project like Ring Road or Black Cat earns an extra 9 cents per kilowatt-hour on top of that. That bonus is the policy lever that makes the bog-friendly engineering worth the added cost and the longer build time.
The Catch
- Two harvest seasons is a short track record. DEI’s own language, “we are literally proving it can be done,” is an admission that this is still a live experiment, not a finished model.
- Not every cranberry bog can host a project like this. Canary Media reports that grid connection is the limiting factor, since not all bogs sit near lines that can take the power.
- A different cranberry bog agrivoltaics project nearby in Carver, Massachusetts, stalled for years after its developer went bankrupt before the arrays started generating power. Crops are growing under those panels now, and Ward told Canary Media the new owner intends to finish the project, but it illustrates how easily this kind of build can stall out.
- No cost figures, subscriber numbers, or farmer lease payments appear in the available reporting. What’s public traces back mostly to DEI’s own account, corroborated by Canary Media’s and Electrek’s independent reporting on the specs and the history, not by an outside financial audit.
- Progress has been slow industry-wide. Ward told Canary Media that agrivoltaic development on cranberry bogs is “picking up steam” but that change “takes a little time.”
Why It Matters to You
- If you farm cranberries or own fallow bog land: a solar lease can turn land you legally can’t develop into land that still earns money, whether or not you keep farming it.
- If you live near Kingston or Plymouth: a community solar subscription tied to one of these arrays could eventually mean a lower bill, though neither company has published enrollment details or a savings figure yet.
- If you just care about open space: this is a case where solar panels and a working wetland share the same acre, instead of clearing forest or farmland the way a conventional solar farm often does.
Sources
- Canary Media: These cranberry bogs come with a side of solar (Nov. 4, 2026)
- Electrek: coverage of DEI’s Ring Road and Black Cat cranberry bog solar projects (Oct. 16, 2026)