Should Fayette County allow hundreds of acres of farmland to be turned into solar farms?

It was just past 10 a.m. on a recent Friday in August and temperatures were already climbing past 85 degrees.

The employees on Silicon Ranch’s Turkey Creek solar farm scrambled to find shade under the tree cover toward the back of the Garrard County property.

The 700 sheep aren’t technically employees of the Nashville solar farm operator. They’re independent contractors who live on the property near the Garrard County High School. In exchange for room and board, they eat the grass on the property. The shade from the more than 150,000 solar modules is an ideal place for sheep to feed.

They eat a lot.

And they love shade, said Daniel Bell, the local shepherd Silicon Ranch hired to bring sheep to the farm.

“Wow. They look great,” said Loran Shallenberger, who directs Silicon Ranch’s land management and regenerative energy operations, during an Aug. 30 tour of Silicon Ranch’s Garrard County operation.

Plenty of land and different types of grass and other good, nutritiously dense green stuff have made those sheep fat and happy.

“Normally, they would be much skinnier this time of year,” Bell said.

The partnership has also been a boon for Bell and his family. He has been able to triple his flock. His 27-year-old son, who was working a back-busting industrial job, has been hired full-time to help manage the operation.

Silicon Ranch, which operates large-scale solar farms in 15 states, thinks its business model -- sustainable solar farms using ecologically friendly practices such as sheep to maintain the land is a good fit for Fayette County. The group has an option to purchase 797 acres in the Haley Road area adjacent to East Kentucky Power Cooperative proposed 384-acre solar farm.

That means a little less than 1,200 acres of Fayette County farmland could be used for solar production in coming years.

East Kentucky Power Cooperative filed its paperwork with the state’s Public Service Commission, which oversees public utilities, in May. Because it is a public utility, it is exempt from city zoning regulations. Its case before the Public Service Commission is still pending.

Silicon Ranch is private and must follow city zoning rules.

Currently, the merged government has no rules in its zoning ordinances allowing solar energy.

Silicon Ranch has proposed a zone text amendment, or a change to the county’s zoning ordinances, to allow solar farms on agricultural land with a conditional use permit, meaning it must get a city board’s approval,and there must be public notice to area landowners.

However, city planners have recommended no solar farms in the county’s agricultural zones. The 11-person Urban County Planning Commission will decide.

A hearing on the zone text amendment is set for Sept. 26.

Some counties have hit pause on solar farms

The Sept. 26 hearing will be the first of likely many public debates over solar farms on agricultural land in Fayette County.

Similar fights over large-scale, ground-mounted solar installations on agricultural land have taken place in city halls and county courthouses across the country.

Several cities and counties have opted to ban solar on agricultural land for a variety of reasons, with storm runoff and soil erosion being two of the primary concerns.

In Clark County, two proposed zoning text amendments allowing solar farms in agricultural areas were voted down after push back from the community in 2021.

In June 2023, the Clark County Fiscal Court took the unusual step of passing an ordinance with the intent “to prevent utility-scale solar development within the agricultural zone in order to preserve farmland, protect historic resources and ensure that development is compatible with neighboring properties.”

Southern Ohio and the counties around Cincinnati also have been ground zero in the fight between large-scale solar farms and agricultural interests. After some of those solar farms went live and there were problems with flooding, some of those counties including Brown and Clermont opted to ban or partially ban solar farms, according to WCPO 9 in Cincinnati.

Unique, high-quality soils in Fayette County

Fayette County’s farmland is unique, argue farmland preservationists.

It has some of the highest U.S. Department of Agriculture soil quality rankings in the country, said Brittany Roethemeier, executive director of the Fayette Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for Fayette County’s agricultural interests and smart-growth policies.

“Eighty-seven percent of the land in Fayette County is USDA prime soil – the best soil in the country,” Roethemeier said during a recent Planning Commission work session to discuss the solar zone text amendment.

Fayette Alliance and the city’s Rural Land Management Board, which oversees land use policies in the county’s agricultural area, have opposed allowing solar farms on agricultural land.

“We are changing the land use for a generation,” Roethemeier said during the Aug. 29 planning commission work session.

Daniel Crum, a senior planner, said city planning staff has researched solar farms extensively over the past four months. Those solar farms are typically 40-year projects. It’s too soon to tell if land used for solar farms can be returned to productive farmland.

Given the unknowns, city planners have recommended solar farms not be allowed on any land zoned agricultural, Crum said. The proposed zone text amendment does allow for other types of solar -- including rooftop solar or smaller ground-mounted solar in most zones, including residential.

“Is it still productive?” Crum said of the land after a solar farm has been removed. “We really don’t know.”

Rooftop solar is not enough, Silicon Ranch says

Silicon Ranch buys the land it on which it operates its solar farms. It has a vested interest in making sure the land and its topsoil retains its value so it can be sold, Shallenberger said during the Aug 29 hearing.

The technology for ground-mounted solar panels is evolving.

Thanks to new technology, solar farms now can do minimal grading. During construction, Silicon Ranch contractors must return four inches of topsoil if it is removed, Shallenberger said.

Although solar farms don’t generate a lot of jobs —typically two to three per site — they have other economic benefits, said Blake Spurgeon, manager of economic and community development for Silicon Ranch.

Most companies have set goals to be net-zero for carbon emissions by certain dates. Many companies want to locate near solar farms to take advantage of the benefits of non-fossil fuel energy sources, Spurgeon said.

Moreover, the county has set a zero carbon emissions goal by 2050, which is part of Fayette County’s Comprehensive Plan, which guides development over the next five years.

“Ten to 15 years down the line, you are going to see rolling blackouts if something like this doesn’t come online,” said Darby Turner, a lawyer for Silicon Ranch. Rolling blackouts are a way for utility companies to manage the amount of energy available when there is not enough power in the electrical grid.

Even if thousands of homeowners and businesses decided to add solar over the next decade or more, it would still not produce the energy that Silicon Ranch’s proposed Haley Pike farm would provide to the electric grid, Spurgeon said.

Silicon Ranch’s proposed farm would generate between 80 to 100 megawatts of energy. That’s a little less than 3% of the total electricity needed in Fayette County.

There aren’t 800 acres of available industrial land in Fayette County to put a solar farm, Turner has previously said.

Others are worried that the text amendment allowing solar will open the floodgates to other large-scale solar farms.

That’s not true, Spurgeon said.

Eastern Kentucky Power and Silicon Ranch’s proposals are the only projects in the pipeline, he said.

If the planning commission sides with Silicon Ranch and allows solar farms in agricultural zones with a conditional use permit, Silicon Ranch would still have to file to get that conditional use permit, which would takes months and could be turned down, Spurgeon said.

It also must get approval from the Public Service Commission’s Electric Generation and Transmission Siting Board that determines where large-scale solar operations can go among other issues.

“None of these will come online until the 2030s,” Spurgeon said.