What is shared solar?
CVE North America Inc. is applying to use a parcel of agricultural land off Mackeys Lane in Rockbridge to build a solar facility called a “shared solar project.”
The international company, an independent power producer headquartered in France, needs a special exception from the county to move forward with this project because the land is currently zoned A-2.
Agricultural and general uses district land, or the A-2 zone, is created
“to protect and maintain important agricultural and forestry lands, natural and scenic resources, critical watersheds, sensitive environmental areas, and other large tracts of land of rural character,”
according to Rockbridge County’s land development regulations.
This is a visual simulation of what the solar panels and stormwater retention pond would look like without landscaping from the planned access road on the parcel. Simulation created by CVE.
The county planning commission has heard from CVE at the past two monthly meetings. The commission will decide at its next meeting in June whether to recommend the special exception to the county board of supervisors, which will make the final decision.
Carson Weinand, senior business developer for CVE, represented the company at both the April and May meetings.
He shared a presentation with details about the project’s proposed site plan.
The solar panels would encompass 25 acres of a 95-acre parcel owned by Troy Plott, a Rockbridge native who now lives in California.
Plott’s parents, Wayne and Brenda Reese, still live in the county and manage the property on a daily basis, he said in an interview.
“We initially started looking at solar probably a year or more ago,” Plott said. “As more information became available about solar and how the programs work, we got more serious.”
Right now, the parcel is leased out to farmers. Plott said that leasing the land to a solar company is a more lucrative option than leasing it for agriculture.
“What are we going to do with farming over the next 25 years and how much will that make? And what will we do with solar over the next 25 years and how much will that make?” Plott said.
“Comparing the two, solar was a little more lucrative and obviously gave a little more stability and a guaranteed amount of income.”
— Troy Plott
To the right is the plan for what the proposed project will look like. There will be two rows of solar panels. Image courtesy of CVE.
This is not an uncommon thought process, according to Jonathan Miles, executive director for the Center for the Advancement of Sustainable Energy (CASE) at James Madison University.
A landowner may decide to use property for solar because “there’s a reliable, consistent revenue stream from use of that land,” especially because agriculture can be financially risky, Miles said.
“So, what [landowners] are doing is not only ensuring themselves with a steady revenue stream, but they are setting their offspring up with that revenue stream to cover property taxes and enable that land to stay in the family,” Miles said.
Plott also said that he and his family see green energy as a secondary benefit, almost like a bonus.
“We really believe that moving to renewable energy is important,” Plott said. “It’s important to start down that path, even if it’s in small pieces. Even if it’s one farm. Even if it’s one family.”
And the environmental benefits of this project would be significant, Weinand said at the planning commission meetings.
“This is why it got passed in the first place at a state level,” he said at the April meeting. “The amount of clean energy that will be placed on the grid, displacing brown energy, is equivalent to avoiding over 13 million pounds of carbon dioxide per year.”
Around 900 homes will benefit from this power generation, according to the plan that CVE presented to the county. And that’s what makes a shared solar program different from a utility-scale solar farm.
Project details courtesy of CVE.
Shared solar programs are owned in shares or leased by those in the area they serve, rather than being owned by a utility.
“We generate renewable energy back into Dominion,” Weinand said. “Dominion gives us credits for all the energy that we generate.”
Under the program, customers can buy subscriptions to the shared solar facility to receive utility bill deductions.
“Customers that purchase a subscription will receive a bill credit for the proportional output of the shared solar facility attributable to that subscriber,” according to the Dominion website page about shared solar programs.
This is a free subscription – there is no monthly fee and no subscription termination fee, Weinand said.
“If somebody has a $100 electric bill, we can allocate them $100 worth of credits,” Weinand said. “Then they, in turn, have a separate bill with CVE, and they pay us $90 for those credits. So, they just turned their $100 bill into a $90 bill, and we got $100 of revenue.”
Capacity is awarded on a first-come first-served basis, according to the Dominion website, and interested residents will be placed on a waitlist if capacity is full.
As far as construction, it will be about a six-month process, Weinand said.
To install the panels, CVE would have to build a temporary gravel access road from Mackeys Lane to the site and extend an existing power line 0.1 miles to get to the site.
During the first month of construction, CVE estimates between 24 and 48 heavy vehicles traveling on Mackeys Lane. For the second, third, fourth and fifth months of construction, this estimate jumps to between 80 and 120 vehicles per month, before dropping back down to four vehicles during the final month.
There will also be trucks coming and going on Mackeys Lane during the decommissioning of the panels, after the useful life of the project, around 25 to 35 years, is over.
Weinand said at the May meeting that CVE hopes to donate or recycle the panels at this point, though they may end up in the landfill.
CVE will also need to install a stormwater retention pond since impervious surfaces, like solar panels, increase surface runoff. Unlike soil, the panels would not absorb rainfall.
Another part of the site plan, one that is particularly important to residents in the area, is the landscape buffer. This has been a big point of contention during the commission meetings.
CVE plans to plant a line of trees to block the panels from view for many of the residents of the area, who are not keen on looking at the solar facility.
However, the trees will take 10 to 15 years to grow, most of the useful life of the project. Weinand said some of the trees will be evergreen, but it is possible that bare trees during the winter won’t do much to screen the panels, even when fully grown.
CVE has revised its plan several times to accommodate the neighbors of the parcel. The company reduced the plan’s acreage and lowered the elevation in an attempt to make the panels less visible.
But residents remain hypercritical. They’d prefer the solar project go somewhere else, specifically a non-residential and non-agricultural area.
Plott, who attended both planning commission meetings via Zoom, said that the residents brought up some good points.
“On the other hand,” he said, “you can’t ever make everyone happy, so there’s never a scenario in these situations where every single person gets what they want out of the process.”