The Solar Book
How to win solar farm vegetation work. Three routes into the work, who to call, what to say, and what it takes to say yes.
Free PDF, no email required. Ten minute read.
The Solar Book
The vegetation work on solar farms that almost no drone operator is chasing. Find the sites near you, the people to call, and the license and insurance it takes to win it.
Download the field guideSolar farm vegetation is spray work with almost no drone competition. The free federal USPVDB map lists every US ground mount solar site over 1 megawatt with the owner's name on it, so you can count the work in your driving radius in about ten minutes. There are three ways in: the side door, calling community solar owners direct on 5 to 40 acre sites for a first job in 4 to 8 weeks; the sub, becoming a vegetation prime's drone on 100 to 2,000 acre sites; and the bid, answering posted solicitations on SAM.gov. Your ag pesticide category does not cover it. Solar needs a right of way or industrial vegetation license plus pollution liability insurance most operators do not carry. NREL studied 54 sites and found a median herbicide cost of $293 an acre on gravel. This free guide gives the routes, the license and insurance gate, the calls, and how to price it.
What is inside
The ten-minute test
Open the free federal USPVDB map, draw your driving radius, and count the solar sites in it. Your number tells you if solar is even worth your time before you spend a dime.
Three routes in
The side door (community solar, direct), the sub (become the prime’s drone), and the bid (SAM.gov and portals). What each needs, time to first job, and which to start with.
The directory
Who to call on one page: community solar owners like Nexamp and Pivot Energy, and the primes and O and M providers like Omnidian and SOLV, flagged by who actually takes subs.
The gate
The license category, the full insurance stack including the pollution liability nobody carries, ISNetworld, and the label rule that decides whether you can legally fly the job at all.
What to say
Copy-paste proof email, sub email, phone opener and voicemail, plus the seven objections they will throw at you and the exact answer to each one.
Three routes into solar vegetation work
They are not equal. One is fast and small, one is slow and steady, one is slowest and biggest. Start where your paperwork lets you start. The guide walks each one step by step.
Route A: The Side Door
Call a community solar owner directSites of 5 to 40 acres where the owner answers his own phone and the vegetation budget is his own problem. First job in 4 to 8 weeks, small checks, nobody gatekeeping. The place everybody should start.
What you need first Insurance, a license and a truck.
Route B: The Sub
Become the vegetation prime’s droneYou do not beat the prime, you become the tool he hires for the ground his mower cannot reach. Sites of 100 to 2,000 acres, repeat volume, he feeds you work. First job in 2 to 4 months.
What you need first ISNetworld, pollution liability, a safety plan and an EMR.
Route C: The Bid
Answer posted solicitationsThe slowest and biggest, on multi-site multi-year contracts posted to SAM.gov, BidNet Direct and FindRFP. Do not start here, but set the alerts today so the work finds you while you work Routes A and B.
What you need first Everything Route B needs, plus bid writing.
The gate: what it takes to say yes
Route A needs the top of this list. Routes B and C need all of it. The guide has the full checklist with costs.
- Part 137 certificate. You already have it. It is the whole reason you can do this work.
- A state right-of-way or industrial vegetation license, plus the aerial category. Your ag category does not cover solar, because solar is not agriculture.
- General liability at $1M per occurrence and $2M aggregate, plus $1M auto liability for driving a trailer onto their site.
- Aviation and hull cover for the aircraft, and pollution liability at $1M per incident, the one policy almost nobody carries. Herbicide work triggers it.
- For Routes B and C: ISNetworld prequalification and a written safety plan with electrical language. A farm safety plan will not pass.
Read the label before every job. A drone is an aircraft, so if the label prohibits aerial application you cannot fly it, no matter how good the pitch was. A lot of standard bareground chemistry has no clean aerial label. Check it before you bid.
Get the full field guide
Fourteen pages: the ten-minute test, three routes in, the full directory of who to call, the license and insurance gate, the copy-paste scripts, the objections and how to price it. Free, no email required.
Download the PDF