Episode Description
Today, we’re speaking with Nick de Vries, Chief Technology Officer at Silicon Ranch, about the instrumental connection between solar power, agriculture, and economic development.
This Nashville solar development company grew into a billion-dollar powerhouse for a reason.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Silicon Ranch being named #5 on TIME America’s Top GreenTech Companies of 2026
- The company’s 2026 SEAL Sustainable Innovation Award for its CattleTracker system
- How this technology is closing the gap between the industries of solar power and agriculture
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Enjoy the episode!
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Episode Transcript
Cortney Piper
Thanks for sitting down with us, Nick.
Nick de Vries
Thanks for having me here, Cortney.
Cortney Piper
All right, first question, and Nick, this is what I love about Silicon Ranch is your mantra is making solar do more. So tell our listeners about Silicon Ranch’s approach to solar energy development.
Nick de Vries
Yeah, making solar do more is our mantra, as you say, one of our catchphrases. It really goes back to the company’s founding. We’re not, say, solar for making just clean energy or solar to improve utilities cost bases, but it’s solar for creating economic development.
We see ourselves as an economic development company, a rural economic development company that uses solar as its vehicle. So the communities have choice in their electric generation, helps them reduce their cost basis for the energy generated for their utilities, and creates economic development opportunities for them. that’s making solar do more is how we take a solar power plant
and create all this added value, whether increasing jobs, manufacturing base, agricultural opportunity, ecological opportunity. It’s about extending the run after the catch, really making solar provide more value, create more value in different ways.
Cortney Piper
Well, and you’ve certainly done that by mixing ag and solar. And congratulations, by the way, on your recent SEAL Award for your cattle tracking, cattle tracker system, which is what we’re going to talk about today. So Nick, share with our listeners, because like I said, mixing ag and solar is not new to Silicon Ranch and it’s really in line with your mantra of making solar do more. So.
Nick de Vries
Thank you.
Nick de Vries
No.
Cortney Piper
explain to our listeners how Silicon Ranch started in what’s called agrovoltaics, that’s the fancy word for mixing solar and ag, and then how the initial idea came about for the cattle tracker specifically.
Nick de Vries
Mm-hmm.
That’s right.
Nick de Vries
Sure, no, I’d love to. This is a story that’s near and dear to me. We’ve been building solar power plants and operating first in the Tennessee Valley and now across the United States and even in Canada for 15 years. That’s how long we’ve been operating and owning solar power plants. And more than half of that, probably eight years now, we’ve been sheep ranching on most of our land as well.
a way that our solar power plants are better together with agriculture. We could see where conventional land management simply kept grass cut like you would see along the highway or at a utility power plant, maybe sprayed with harsh chemicals just to keep everything tidy was not serving the land we own.
very well and that we saw that agriculture, agricultural practices could benefit our land, build value on our land, both agriculturally and ecologically by sheep ranching. So we’ve done this for eight years now and our leaders in the nation in sheep ranching under solar, probably five or six different states, we have our own flock of sheep.
in Georgia and then work with 10 individual farm families across five different states where they bring their sheep onto our property and effectively have, you know, they start their own ranch on our properties. So we have done this a long time and seen success with it. We can see that it makes a better energy power plant. We have less invasive species.
weeds growing into our equipment. We have better soil conditions and people like it. We build social value. People see that we can identify with what we’re doing better when we sheep ranch. But probably six years ago, I was working with a friend, Will Harris, down in Georgia. we were the pioneers in doing this together.
Nick de Vries
But he said, you know, Nick, my family’s business is cattle. It’s been for generations, five generations. We raise and sell cattle. And could you find a way that we could work with cattle onto your solar power plants? And I saw just a bit of a challenge as a test between friends, but an important one. He wouldn’t be asking if it didn’t matter to him.
And cattle ranching is very important for our nation, all the states. And so I saw it as a call to arms to go figure this out and find a way that we could actually generate, you know, have a good, an excellent solar power plant with excellent economics, with our risks managed. But can we find a way to bring cattle into it as well and build value with
Cortney Piper
So let’s talk a little bit more about that. What makes the cattle tracker unique? mean, the benefits to the farm, the community. Talk a little bit more about those benefits.
Nick de Vries
Sure. So I think of how we build value in four different ways, energy value, agricultural value, ecological value, and social value. And so all four of those, and this is where Cattle Tracker hits on all four. We produce electricity, generate revenues from it, we pay taxes on our properties that go to the local communities.
I think people can see a solar power plant and understand that it builds energy value for sure. Agricultural value is how many dollars per acre can you generate revenue from agricultural sales? And for agrivoltaics, this is important. It’s not just kind of looking like agriculture. It’s actually.
performing agriculture and having an agribusiness that stands on its own. That’s something important to us at Silicon Ranch. So cattle definitely help with that. Ecological value, are we building organic matter in our soil? Are we allowing grass to grow, thrive? Holding more water in our soil and not just running it, having it run off.
those are our ecological values. And then social value, do people see themselves in our power plants? Do they see themselves in our company, in our operation? Are we reflecting the values of the community? These are all important. And so Cattle Tracker hits on all four. And then that’s how you know this is a good idea. This is a hit and something that we should pursue.
Cortney Piper
Now, cattle are quite large animals and the cattle I’ve been around, I don’t get a sense that they have a lot of spatial awareness or coordination. So what was your development stage and field testing processes like for the cattle tracker?
Nick de Vries
Yeah.
Nick de Vries
All right, well, my friends in the universities who are animal behavior specialists will tell you that they do have good spatial awareness and are incredibly actually flexible and maneuverable. But sure, you can take a look at them and that they’re large and bigger than humans. so I think it’s a natural wonder about them. And so look, we had to design the power plant.
Cortney Piper
Nick de Vries
the design of the steel and everything to accommodate that. We’ve always started with sheep because sheep physically fit under most of the power plants that we’re building. Cattle are larger. So we had to see how high do they need to be. you need to understand that if a cow and a solar panel collided, who won? The answer is neither. I mean, maybe the…
Cortney Piper
neither.
Nick de Vries
The solar panel gets damaged, the cow could get hurt from hitting it. And so neither is good. We had to find a design. We tried to multiple different heights in a trial setup in controlled environments, had students from Colorado State University and my research partners there study this and build statistical values of how many cow interactions there were.
with the equipment at multiple different heights. So it’s not just a looks right, feels good, maybe it’s good enough, but we could build a statistical pack model of this to understand what are the risks to be mitigated with the different design options that we had available to us.
Cortney Piper
So this, seems to me like Silicon Ranch has closed this gap between solar power and agriculture or just the economics of agriculture. In the state of Tennessee, and I’m sure this is not unique to Tennessee, we have lamented the loss of farmland. And you all have seemed to found a piece of the puzzle where you can improve the economics of
farming by incorporating solar energy. So can you talk a little bit more about that? Because at its core, Silicon Ranch is an economic development company.
Nick de Vries
Yeah, sure. Getting the economics of the agricultural piece right without damaging the economics of the power plant is the key. That’s how you have a successful program. And this was made clear to me right from the start from executive management at the company is to get it.
It seems wonderful to put the two paired, peanut butter and jelly. This is great. Put the two together. But the two had to be able to stand on their own as businesses. And when you have that, this is something that can endure. You can afford to do this every project that you work on for multiple years. It’s not just a one and done showpiece operation. yes.
we buy land and we build solar power plants on it. How can we create the most value? It’s just not a one thing, one trick pony. But if you can incorporate agriculture, ecological conservation in them together, you’re building, this is making solar do more, you’re building something honestly quite special. So the economics of our sheep ranches are honestly
Exemplary they do very well. They provide a needed service to our operations that would have been done with mowing We are grown our flock, you know lawn mowers If you have two lawn mowers three lawn mowers at the end of the year after the end of two years You might only have two because one breaks down two three four sheep They multiply over over time and so we’re building value agricultural value in our flocks and soon our herds of cows
Cortney Piper
Now, one of the things that I love about Silicon Ranch and especially interacting with your founders with Matt Kisper and Reagan Farr is they always have a good story to tell. Always have a good story to tell. So do you have any stories from working with rural communities that you would like to share with our listeners?
Nick de Vries
Mm-hmm. Sure. Yeah.
Nick de Vries
Well, first would be one in Georgia when we were down in early county working with white oak pastures. The county was excited that we were coming in and building a power plant. It really mattered for their schools. They could see immediately how the revenues were going to come into the county and allow their schools to have a slightly larger budget, maybe give their teachers a pay raise.
They were then tickled pink to learn that we were doing this with agriculture, reflecting the values of their county and pulling them into the project more than they had seen. They’d seen maybe we were an outside company bringing revenues to the county, that’s nice, but they maybe hadn’t seen themselves in the project. And so that’s with early county in Georgia. Also great.
stories in East Tennessee with Brightridge. They use the savings. Jeff Dykes, the CEO of Brightridge in East Tennessee, they look at the savings that they get from purchasing solar power and then recognize those savings and then contribute those savings back to the county as well. So back to the county into the school system. So I think in both of those cases the schools are winning.
because the utilities in that area had chose to add solar to their mix of generation.
Cortney Piper
You know, at the Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council, we chose that term advanced energy because we wanted this organization to represent the totality of energy solutions. And Matt Kisper was a, and Matt has held several positions with Silicon Ranch, but I like to refer to him as one of your co-founders.
Nick de Vries
Mm-hmm.
he’s the co-founder, alright.
Cortney Piper
And he was very fond of saying, look, we don’t need another organization that’s going to debate whether a particular technology is clean, green or sustainable. We need to look at energy innovation as a means to economic development and job creation. And it sounds to me like Silicon Ranch Corporation has cracked that nut. So what else do you want people to know about solar energy and how it can work for them? I know
I like to tell people that when we’re doing this, know, solar energy is no longer rainbows and kittens and butterflies. There is real economic value and social value and ecological value that you get out of solar. So what else would you like people to know about solar energy?
Nick de Vries
Yeah.
Nick de Vries
Yeah.
Nick de Vries
The sun shines across the United States, all the states. And if you can grow a crop of some kind, can generate electricity from solar power. And in so many ways in the past, where you could generate power was limited. Maybe it was if you had a river, okay, or if you had a forest and could burn the wood, or if you had coal, you had these resources.
and that was where cities took off or industries took off because there was mills on the water. Or from my home country in the Netherlands, had windmills pumping water out to dry land for agriculture. But it was all after harnessing those resources. And either you had them or you didn’t. Solar power, we all have that resource. We all have the sun.
And so it isn’t just like, that’s going to work in the desert southwest where there’s a ton of sun. No, it shines across the United States. And it can be sized at different sizes. So I can build a solar power plant for a community. can for a small town, for a small utility with just a few megawatts for what their energy needs. We can do it for large.
all of TVA and how much energy they purchase and consume and generate, it can be sized differently. So it’s something that can fit every community and bring them benefit. Just as if, wow, we’re on the river, we’ve got the rapids here, we can build a water mill. Every city in America can now have that with solar power.
Cortney Piper
We started this conversation talking about your 2026 SEAL award and SEAL stands for Sustainability, Environmental Achievement and Leadership. So what has the reaction been to the award announcement and just the broader impact of this cattle tracker technology?
Nick de Vries
Uh-huh.
Nick de Vries
Yeah, that was a great win for us. And honestly, one that sort of humbled me. The reaction had been an amazing outpouring of support, sort of a stamp of approval that what seemingly six years ago was kind of an odd idea. Why are you trying to put cows under solar panels, Nick? Well, I’m doing it because my friend put me up to it. Well.
No, that this was indeed a good idea. This was something that people were looking for. It’s not just say a solution looking for a problem, but something that people honestly care about. So the award meant a lot to me personally that more people than just me thought this was a neat thing to do. We’ve been building off of that of late, Time Magazine just.
recognized this as one of the top five green tech companies in America. There’s a lot of us, a lot of companies, and to be in the top five position is you’re doing something right on all these fronts, right? You have solid financials, you are innovating, and you’re having ecological impact results that people can see and recognize.
Cortney Piper
Congratulations.
Cortney Piper
Well, let’s talk more about what y’all are doing right because you are doing a lot right. Silicon Ranch is responsible for attracting a rather sizable domestic manufacturing supply chain to the United States, to the Tennessee Valley, to the state of Tennessee. So tell our listeners a little bit more about that economic impact you’ve had by bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.
Nick de Vries
We have.
Nick de Vries
Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. So our company success is great to see, but it’s not really meaningful if we aren’t doing it with the communities we serve across the nation. And so to say that, we found this way to produce electricity and make some money doing that and found a way to incorporate agriculture. But if you’re not doing it with goods produced
in our own counties, in our states, by our family members, something’s missing. We’re missing out on that economic driver that factory production provides and the jobs that they provide across our country. So from the start, building with domestic product mattered. One of our very first projects in Memphis, Tennessee was all built with steel from the Big River
facility across the Mississippi and Arkansas and solar modules built there by the Sharp Corporation in Memphis. That was 15 years ago. But then things sort of dried up. There weren’t many other suppliers that we could go to and that sort of left a hole in our hearts. And we had to source material where we could to build our business but never lost sight of the fact that all of this equipment
could be produced in America if there was just enough other customers for it, but if there was the investment in it. And so as our company grew, we could see where we could, we have a choice with how we spend our dollars. Every consumer does. Where do they buy material? Where do you buy your food? Who do you buy from? We chose America, very simple. And so with our purchasing power,
were able to help some of our long time key suppliers, NextPower, First Solar just to name a few, and say we’re gonna buy a lot of equipment from you, but only if you build it here in the United States. And they wanted to, they needed the investment, they needed that catalyst that we could provide. So this has resulted in factories across the United States being built, First Solar in Ohio.
Nick de Vries
NextPower is a California based company, but bit by bit move them towards where we build so that they could be close to us, their customer. So now First Solar has built facilities near Huntsville, Alabama within the Tennessee Valley. And then NextPower has a factory producing the specific steel we need to build the trackers in Memphis. Things are moving fast in this front.
our goods are made in the United States.
Cortney Piper
That is fantastic. Well, Nick, tell our listeners where they can learn more about you and Silicon Ranch.
Nick de Vries
Yeah.
Nick de Vries
Well, okay. Well, I’m a podcaster just like you, Cortney. So you can listen to Silicon Ranch Radio, the host, and talk about more of these subjects in detail. We had a nice long series of podcast episodes on domestic manufacturing. My first interviewee ever as the podcast host was our chairman, Matt Kisper. So a great interviewer. Get started with him. Our website…
Cortney Piper
He’s a great interview. He’s a great interview.
Nick de Vries
SiliconRanch.com and then slash CattleTracker is where you can learn more about that.
Cortney Piper
Great, well Nick, thanks for coming on the show.
Nick de Vries
Appreciate you having me, Cortney.