Behold the power of the sun.
As harnessing the sun’s rays moves to the forefront as a green energy source in charging the nation’s electrical power supply, questions and concerns remain among landowners and their neighbors about the potential convergence of contiguous, voltaic solar panels on open lands.
Large-scale solar companies are cropping up everywhere, some with different LLC names for the same companies doing different projects.
The companies are paid by the electrical power suppliers to furnish the sun’s energy, and at a fast pace, they are establishing fields of contiguous voltaic solar panels numbering in the hundreds or thousands.
But the question remains where the best places are to locate these connected glass panels to collect the available power yet preserve farmland and the aesthetics of the countryside, while best serving the industry and not interfering with agricultural production and spacious prime farmland fields.
In Lawrence County, more than half of its 27 municipalities have adopted measures in anticipation of the quickly multiplying commercial solar energy projects.
Some have enacted solar ordinances requiring buffers and fencing, and especially requiring bonding for future reclamation and disposal of the glass panels and related apparatus, once the life of the projects is done in 30 to 40 years.
By that time, solar company operators might be retired or no longer on earth, and companies that exist now may no longer be around.
Companies are required to post bonds to ensure the land will be restored and the panels and other apparatus recycled or properly disposed.
Some municipalities that have zoning ordinances and maps have amended them to restrict solar operations to specific districts or zones. An example is North Beaver Township, where the township supervisors amended the ordinance to limit commercial solar operations only to industrial zones.
Vesper Energy, one of the first companies to set its sights on Lawrence County, has rooted a local office in downtown New Castle and was aggressively soliciting leases from farmers throughout North Beaver Township before the ordinance change halted their prospects.
The company did not appeal the zoning change in court and now is limited to where its solar arrays can be established. That rules out acres of prime farmland in that largely agricultural municipality.
Vesper has gone around contributing thousands to local charities, promising thousands to the school district if its project commences, and sponsoring scholarships and other do-good acts to be accepted in the community.
Vesper most recently has leased office space at 101 S. Mercer St. in New Castle as its local home base. But the ordinance still stands as amended.
Citizens who have attended meetings opposing solar projects in various municipalities have cited the unsightliness of so many panels taking up scenic and productive farmland, concerns for wildlife, and for what will happen if the panels are damaged, the potential impact on property values and where will the equipment ultimately end up once the projects have run their course over decades.
An opposing view is that farmers who are getting older and whose offspring no longer are interested in farming, are seeing leasing or selling their land for solar as a possible way to reap financial returns and keep the land in some type of production, with hopes of it later being returned to farming once the panels are gone.
Neshannock Township, one of the more commercial municipalities, also is faced with the prospect of changing the zoning ordinance to accommodate solar — this time at the request of the landowner, who owns a horse farm in a rural residential zone and wants to lease it for solar.
The landowner is challenging the township zoning ordinance with a request for a curative amendment to allow an 80-acre solar operation as a regular use in the zone where the land is located.
The change is not recommended by either the township or the county planning boards. The township has yet to vote on the request.
The Neshannock supervisors in a recent zoning ordinance change instituted in April restricted solar operations to two types of industrial zones in the township only.
Other municipalities where solar projects already are proposed or are in the works for local farmland are Washington and Scott townships, where there is no zoning. Instead, township officials have enacted solar ordinances, only to regulate the projects to come. They include the rural Washington and Scott townships.
“Without zoning you don’t have any real structure of where solar operation can locate,” said Cliff Wallace, president of the Beaver-Lawrence Farm Bureau, who has studied the solar situation for local farmers in the two counties and beyond.
The municipalities that enact individual solar ordinances can control setbacks, vegetating borders, fencing and the biggest thing, bonding, he said, and for most landowners who lease, reclamation after the project has run its course is one of their biggest concerns.
“There are cables buried, stakes in the ground, sometimes concrete anchors, aluminum steel frames and copper wire, all of which is recyclable, but plate glass doesn’t have much value and limited places recycle panels.”
The Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors in a November 2023 issue of Township News, suggested municipalities include these measures in any solar ordinance: site layout, setbacks, panel height, maximum lot coverage, agricultural soils, site buffers, stormwater management, traffic impacts, battery storage, glare reduction, fire and first responder safety and site decommissioning.
Wallace said he sees the solar landscape as starting to shift a little.
“Now we’re seeing more of the 20- or 30-acre type of projects in Mercer and Crawford counties,” he said. “They’ve done construction on those projects already. The biggest thing I’m picking up is that the large projects have to be on a PGM cue and need approval and a permit, and the smaller projects are more on the order of community solar, where they can go onto local power lines without overloading and not tying into high tension lines.”
Wallace pointed out that in Hickory Township, farmers are getting letters and being contacted by companies offering them leases paying $3,000 to 3,500 an acre per year.
Vesper started out offering about $800 per acre per year when it started, he said, and in eastern Pennsylvania, solar companies are offering landowners about $5,000 per acre.
“The other thing I’m seeing is that larger projects have batteries, the small ones do not,” he continued.
“That’s a blessing or a curse.”
An advantage of a battery system is that it can store capacity, and if it produces surplus power in the daytime, it can be stored and put in the grid at night, making it available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he pointed out.
“But lithium batteries have everyone a little edgy. Some landowners are glad not to have a battery system because the panels won’t explode or burn and certainly are more stable and safer than the ones with batteries.”
He explained that solar companies when locating a project look at the proximity to a power line and ones with lower usage.
That’s what attracted Vesper to North Beaver, Wallace said.
“The high tension line had power from the Bruce Mansfield Plant, and the coal plant there had shut down.”
Vesper has a large project in Indiana County, because the Homer City power plant is shutting down and all the infrastructure is right there, he said.
dwachter@ncnewsonline.com
