Students from North Judson-San Pierre High School in North Judson got an insider tour at Mammoth Solar last week.

Led by business instructor Mollie Dallahan, the students have been learning about the intersection of food and energy systems. They toured Mammoth Solar’s facility and met with on-site agrivoltaics farmer Billy Bope. Bope shared examples of how solar energy is integrated with agricultural practices like sheep grazing.

“Our students don’t often get to see opportunities like this,” Dallahan said in a press release. “To hear directly from professionals and see it all in action was a game-changer for them.”

Students will develop their own solutions to the challenges they observed on-site. Their proposals will serve as their final exam. They will submit them to the national Solar Farm Summit Student Design Challenge Competition.

Select students will be invited to attend the Solar Farm Summit in Chicago this summer. They may get an opportunity to return to Mammoth Solar in August to present their work to visiting professionals in the field.

The experience was part of a collaboration between Mammoth Solar’s support of the StartedUp Foundation’s Innovation Educator Fellowship, the school’s business program and the Solar Farm Summit’s Student Design Challenge.

The Mammoth Solar project is expected to generate enough energy to power about 275,000 households annually. It has a footprint of 13,000 acres across Starke and Pulaski Counties. The project was named “Mammoth” because of mammoth bones discovered in fields where it would be built and because of the scope of the project.