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12 Hartford Business Journal | January 11, 2021 | HartfordBusiness.com Verogy has also pledged to create native pollinator habitats at those three sites, as well as others, by planting specifi c seed mixes. It will also store, for potential later use, 2 acres of prime soils that will be excavated during construction of its 3.3-megawatt Bristol project. Those are several emerging strategies Verogy and other solar developers are using to satisfy state regulators, who are asking for greater farmland mitigation commitments following a 2017 state law that makes it tougher to win approval to build on certain agricultural and forest lands. For projects on so-called "prime" farmland, the idea is to maintain some agricultural activity when renewable energy generation takes over. "This has been a wild learning process for us, as solar developers," said Verogy CEO William Herchel. "If you had told me 12 or 18 months ago that we were going to be contracting with sheep farmers and shepherds, I would have said you're crazy, but that's the way it's going and it's a really good thing." Herchel, a licensed attorney and UConn Law alum, co-founded Verogy with a team of fellow former Greenskies Renewable Energy executives who decided to strike out on their own when the Middletown- based solar fi rm was acquired in 2017. Verogy, which today has 16 employees, launched with the help of a $5 million pre-seed equity round from Texas-based Stonehenge Growth Capital. The company is pursuing developments in several states and has a Connecticut pipeline of six pending and approved projects totaling more than 20 megawatts. By By Matt Pilon mpilon@hartfordbusiness.com C onnecticut's solar energy sector is entering its next phase, marked by ever-larger projects and greater scrutiny by regulators and farming advocates on the long-term impact ground- mounted panel arrays have on the state's limited stock of agricultural land. One upstart solar developer working to become a player in that evolving landscape is Hartford- based Verogy, and the strategies it's employing to ward off opposition are unique, to say the least. Since last summer, the three-year- old company has helped convince regulators to approve several of its New Energy Hartford's Verogy aims to soothe growing friction between solar developers, farmland advocates utility-scale projects on Connecticut farms by allowing sheep to live and graze under and around its solar panels. Sheep grazing will occur at its recently approved East Windsor and Bristol solar farms, and potentially at a Southington project it has pending before the Connecticut Siting Council, which has purview over energy generation projects of 2 megawatts or greater. Verogy's CT project pipeline 2020 has been a breakout year for solar development startup Verogy, founded in 2017 by a team of former Greenskies executives. In recent months, the Hartford-based firm has won state approvals for three ground- mounted solar projects totaling 7.2 megawatts of generation capacity. In addition, Verogy has applications pending before the Connecticut Siting Council for three more projects, all in Hartford County, which together total about 14 megawatts. The project pipeline includes: • DG Connecticut Solar II (Torrington), 1.97 megawatts, approved Aug. 2020 • Bristol Solar One, 3.25 megawatts, approved Nov. 2020 • Watertown Solar One, 1.98 megawatts, approved Dec. 2020 • East Windsor Solar One, 4.9 megawatts, pending • Burlington Solar One, 3.5 megawatts, pending • Solar One Southington, 4.7 megawatts, pending Hartford-based solar developer Verogy has already built a healthy development pipeline in Connecticut, where the three-year-old startup is testing new methods for reducing the impact its solar panels have on agricultural activity. Pictured (from left to right) are: CEO William Herchel, COO Steve DeNino and Director of Development Bryan Fitzgerald. HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER