Editor, The Smithfield Times:

Regarding the article “New solar farms in pipeline?” (Nov. 13), solar facilities are not farms. Sheep around solar arrays is forcing a square peg into a round hole to make one’s point. It’s akin to churches adding sheep or beehives and declaring themselves farms and not paying stormwater fees! 

PJM Interconnection queues only Transmission Energy Generators. A solar facility is not designed for transmission, is likely for distribution, “behind the meter,” or it could be a merchant. Woodland Solar Facility in Isle of Wight, with a lot of arrays aimed everywhere but the sun, is not a PJM Queue facility. There are more like Woodland not in the PJM Queue but may be found in the state Department of Environmental Quality listing. Now, unlike PJM, DEQ listing includes land sizes and in Virginia the average size is 11 acres per MW.

The State Corporation Commission decides on proposed facilities of 150WM or greater about a year before they go to the counties. 

In the United States, only Virginia’s Energy Department entity is listed as a member of the lobbyist group Solar Energy Industry Association. The VED relies on PJM, utilities and solar developers for information. The VED is handicapped by facilitating the “Virginia Solar Energy Development and Energy Storage Authority.” The VSED&ESA annual report was last made public in 2021. The 2022 and 2023 reports are missing. 

PJM status and counts change every month, but the commonwealth number has remained at about 43,000 MW for years. A similar number is listed in the VSED&ESA 2021 report with county count. 

Excluding House Bill 636’s goal of restricting localities’ decisions and lifting moratoriums on utility scale solar, the 43,000 MW nameplate becomes approximately 8,250 MW nameplate coal or nuclear. 

Using data from U.S. Energy Information Administration Forms 860 and 923, Virginia has a degrading trend rate of 4.5%, which reduces 43,000 solar to 8,250 equivalent to approximately 2,900 projected by the early 2040s, making the need to hide the truth!

 

David Tucker

Rushmere