Utility-scale and community solar projects across Canada rely on compact equipment for site prep, cable trenching, and ongoing vegetation management. A practical breakdown of what skid steers do on solar sites.
Canada's utility-scale and mid-size solar industry has expanded significantly, particularly in Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan where large flat land parcels and favourable policies have driven project development. Skid steers appear on solar sites at multiple stages — from initial land clearing to ongoing vegetation management over the 25+ year operational life of the installation.
This guide covers the specific ways skid steers and their attachments contribute to solar farm work, from construction through maintenance.
Most utility solar sites are on agricultural or lightly wooded land. Before any grading or installation work can begin, existing vegetation must be cleared. The specific clearing approach depends on what's on the site:
Agricultural fields: Typically minimal clearing required. A tiller or soil conditioner may be used to manage existing crop residue before grading. The main skid steer work at this stage is access road construction and initial levelling.
Brushy or scrub land: A brush cutter or forestry mulcher handles light woody vegetation efficiently. A mulcher processes material in place, eliminating the need to haul brush off site. This is typically the preferred approach when the land is destined for a solar array, since the mulched material returns organic matter to the soil that will support the perennial ground cover planted under and around the panels.
Treed land: Larger trees require felling (typically by chainsaw crews) before skid steer cleanup work. A root grapple handles log and slash cleanup after felling. A stump grinder deals with stumps — large root balls left in place under solar arrays create uneven terrain and can damage panel mounting structures as they rot and settle.
Solar arrays require careful grading. Panels follow the natural terrain to some degree (most mounting systems allow for grade variation), but access roads, cable routes, and the perimeter of the installation need to be properly graded for drainage and access. Standing water under solar arrays damages equipment, creates maintenance access problems, and promotes vegetation problems.
A dozer blade and box blade handle the fine grading work. For larger sites, skid steers typically work as secondary grading and detail machines alongside larger dozers and motor graders that handle the bulk earth moving.
Drainage swales along panel rows and around the site perimeter are a significant part of solar site grading. These need to be established before panel installation begins — modifying drainage after panels are in place is extremely disruptive and expensive.
Solar arrays require extensive cabling to connect individual panels to combiner boxes, inverters, and the grid interconnection point. This cabling runs underground in trenches.
A chain trencher attachment on a skid steer is the standard tool for solar cable trenching. DC collection cables typically run at 30–60 cm depth; AC interconnection cables may go deeper depending on the electrical design. A standard chain trencher on a mid-size skid steer handles these depths in normal soil conditions.
Solar sites that were previously agricultural land often have good soil with few rocks — ideal trenching conditions that allow rapid progress. Sites on rocky Canadian Shield terrain or with significant glacial till (common across much of Ontario, Quebec, and the Prairies) require rock trenching capability. A rock wheel attachment is better suited to fractured bedrock; a chain trencher with carbide-tipped teeth handles medium cobble and rock-contaminated soil.
Trench width for solar cable work is typically narrow — 15–25 cm in many cases — which plays to the strengths of a skid steer trencher versus a larger dedicated machine. The skid steer can also navigate between installation rows that are being worked simultaneously.
Underground utility caution: Solar sites developed on agricultural land may have existing tile drainage systems, buried water lines, and legacy electrical services. Always have the site utility-located before trenching begins, and review any existing drainage tile plans for the property. Cutting a drainage tile during cable installation creates drainage problems that persist for the life of the project.
Larger cable runs are typically installed in conduit rather than direct-buried. Trenching for conduit follows the same approach as direct burial, but the trench may need to be wider to accommodate multiple conduits in a duct bank arrangement. A vibratory plate compactor is used after conduit placement and initial backfill to consolidate the trench fill before final grading and seeding.
Utility solar panels are typically mounted on driven galvanized steel piles — helical piles or straight tube piles driven into the ground with a hydraulic ram. This is specialized equipment (typically a dedicated pile driving rig). However, skid steers with post driver attachments are used in some smaller solar applications for driving ground-mount anchor posts that don't require the torque capacity of a full pile driver.
Skid steers also handle material delivery during pile and racking installation — moving piles from storage to the installation crew and positioning racking components for assembly.
Solar farms require internal access roads for maintenance vehicles and emergency access. These roads need to be built to support the weight of maintenance equipment and service vehicles over the 25+ year project life.
Skid steers participate in road construction at the grading and compaction stages: a box blade or dozer blade handles the road formation, a bucket places and spreads granular base, and a vibratory plate compactor (for smaller roads) or roller (for wider roads) compacts the base before gravel surfacing is applied.
The single most significant ongoing skid steer application at operational solar farms is vegetation management. Panel arrays lose efficiency if vegetation grows up and shades the panels. The entire area under and around the arrays requires annual or more frequent cutting.
A mulcher or brush cutter attachment handles perennial vegetation management around and between solar rows. The approach depends on what vegetation program the site uses:
Managed grass under panels: Many Canadian solar sites establish a low-growing grass mix under panels that requires mowing 1–3 times per season. A brush cutter or disc mulcher handles this at height. The machine travels the rows, keeping vegetation below the panel elevation to prevent shading.
Native wildflower/pollinator habitat: Some Ontario and British Columbia solar operators are establishing pollinator habitat under panels. This requires management to prevent woody species from establishing and eventually shading panels, while allowing the desired flowering species to persist. A selective approach with a brush cutter — targeting woody stems and invasive species — is the right tool here.
Fence line and perimeter clearing: Security fencing around solar farms requires annual vegetation clearing on both sides. A mulcher or brush cutter attachment handles this efficiently, moving along the perimeter fence without requiring the operator to leave the cab.
The space under and immediately adjacent to solar panels is a challenge for standard mowing equipment. Skid steers with boom-mounted brush cutters can sometimes reach under low panels, but the confined space is a significant constraint. Many operators use a compact walk-behind or a very small compact track loader with a brush attachment for the under-panel work, reserving the skid steer for perimeter work and row corridors.
Alternatively, sheep grazing under solar panels — "agrivoltaic" operations — is an increasingly common approach at Canadian solar sites, which reduces mechanical vegetation management requirements significantly.
Large tilted solar panels shed snow on their own as temperatures fluctuate. The areas around and beneath panels can accumulate significant drifted snow that blocks access and can affect drainage. Snow management on solar sites is primarily focused on keeping access roads clear and managing snow accumulation at the panel bases.
A snow pusher is the right tool for access road clearing between panel rows. The row width determines the maximum pusher width — many solar array rows are 4–6 m apart, allowing a 2.4–3.0 m pusher to clear the access corridor efficiently.