Council delays solar ordinance
Panels are being installed at the solar farm on Billy Farrow Highway/Gilchrist Road, owned by Darlington Solar, LLC.
Photo by Jana E. Pye
By Samantha Lyles, Staff Writer, slyles@newsandpress.net
Darlington County Council has again opted to delay amending the county’s renewable energy ordinance pending review by members of the Planning Commission. The ordinance came up for second reading at council’s December 5 meeting and was carried over until January.
At the Dec. 5 meeting, two representatives from the solar energy industry addressed council, requesting that the ordinance be altered to remove what they viewed as unreasonable requirements for solar developers.
Lesley Williams, director of land acquisition and commercial sales for Southern Current, noted some parts of the proposed ordinance could dissuade developers from locating solar harvesting sites in Darlington County.
She proposed that the county consider using “size of project” standards rather than acreage restrictions, basing location and setback requirements on site energy outputs ranging from a 1 megawatt minimum to a ceiling of 75 megawatts, beyond which a solar development must be registered as a utility.
“Acreage is really difficult for a solar farm to base on because we could have one acre here, one acre here, and they’re different,” said Williams.
She did note that a 1 megawatt minimum might shut out future solar development by local energy cooperatives, which would likely prefer to begin their solar supplementation with small sites.
Williams said that Southern Current has submitted recommendations to the Planning Commission, incorporating parts of a solar energy development template devised by the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center – a plan written with input from citizens, educators, and state and local government.
She suggested that writing in some stringent additional prerequisites – like making developers apply for a costly interconnection permit with their electric utility of record – would weed out any fly-by-night operations and ensure that only serious developers try to locate their solar energy systems in Darlington County.
Engineer Jon Davis of Raleigh, North Carolina firm Capital Solar said that a “one size fits all” ordinance is not the way to go, and observed that the current proposed requirement for solar facilities to be set back 500 feet from the nearest residence would make it difficult to construct a smaller sized solar harvesting facility.
“That could really kill a project,” said Davis, adding that requirements for builders to avoid wetlands and other types of unavailable or unsuitable terrain can eat up a project’s acreage and reduce the amount of area utilized for panel installations.
Williams agreed that some developers will balk at being forced to lease 500 feet of land that cannot ever be utilized for energy production.
Davis noted that instead of focusing on distance-based setbacks – which could be negated if the solar facility is downslope from homes, making it easily visible to all residents – the ordinance language should perhaps focus on ensuring that screening buffers of trees and shrubs are adequate.
Davis said that most solar facility plans try to incorporate as much natural vegetative buffer as possible, and he would prefer that the county ordinance retain the previous minimum of a 40-foot wide buffer zone rather than expanding that to 50 feet. He also said that he would prefer the ordinance require a letter of credit from developers rather than requiring them to obtain a large bond to ensure completion of any site cleanup or decommissioning in the future.