Surry County’s Planning Commission is proposing zoning ordinance amendments that would further restrict the proliferation of solar farms.

In 2023, county supervisors adopted an energy policy amendment to Surry’s comprehensive plan setting a 10%, or 15,278-acre, cap on the cumulative developable acreage devoted to energy projects, including solar farms.

The proposed ordinance amendment would specifically restrict utility-scale solar farms to no more than 7%, or 10,695 acres.

Surry County has approved three utility-scale solar farms to date. These include the adjacent 2018-approved Spring Grove Solar LLC and Colonial Trail West solar farms and the 2021-approved 1,750-acre Cavalier solar farm spanning the Isle of Wight-Surry county line, roughly 1,300 acres of which are on Surry’s side.

Community Development and Planning Director Horace Wade estimates the existing facilities account for roughly 6% of the proposed acreage cap.

Planning Commission Chairman Eddie Brock, in August, said the proposed 7% cap originated after he and other Surry commissioners returned from a state conference where they learned most localities that have adopted acreage caps for solar farms have set limits of 2% to 3%. 

Isle of Wight County, in 2023, enacted an ordinance capping existing and proposed solar farms at 2% of the county’s “prime” farm soils, or a maximum of 2,446 acres, though supervisors’ September approval of Arlington-based AES Clean Energy’s proposed Sycamore Cross solar farm, which would span more than 2,200 acres across the westernmost edge of the Isle of Wight-Surry county line, will cause the county to exceed the limit. Ten previously approved Isle of Wight solar farms collectively accounted for just over 2,200 acres prior to Isle of Wight’s approval of Sycamore Cross, which will remove another 614 acres of prime farmland from agricultural production.

Southampton County in 2022 enacted an ordinance capping utility-scale solar farms at 1%, or 3,855 acres, of which 1,418 were spoken for at the time, according to reporting by The Tidewater News.

Surry’s 10% cap, by comparison, “seems like a lot of land,” Brock said.

The draft ordinance would further require utility-scale solar farms, defined as those producing more than 5 megawatts, be surrounded by a minimum 300-foot vegetative buffer from any public right-of-way or the main structure on an adjoining property.

The Planning Commission’s Oct. 28 public hearing on the draft ordinance drew five speakers, all but one in opposition to the proposed wording. The four opposition speakers each gave addresses outside of Surry County.

“We support the county’s efforts to draft a solar ordinance that promotes responsible solar development while maintaining Surry’s rural character” but “as a matter of basic fairness and as common practice in many localities we believe the new ordinance should make clear that a project such as ours, which is substantially advanced in this process through permitting, and near public hearings on the requested conditional use permit, remain subject to the ordinance currently in effect,” said Greg Creswell, senior development manager of AES, which has a pending conditional use permit application for the roughly 450 acres of Sycamore Cross that would be located on Surry’s side of the Isle of Wight line.

Creswell took specific issue with the proposed 300-foot minimum setback, which he said could “unfairly limit owners of smaller parcels” from being able to sell or lease their land for solar projects by reducing the buildable acreage below anything usable.

He also raised concerns about language that would require the owner of a solar farm to begin its decommissioning process if it ceased producing electricity for six months or more. Prior to the hearing, County Attorney Lola Perkins said draft language not included in the version from the Oct. 28 agenda had been tweaked to allow an additional six months in cases where lengthy repairs are needed after a severe storm or other natural disaster. For that reason, the commissioners deferred voting until November on whether to advance the draft to county supervisors.

Creswell’s final concern was with language requiring, for erosion and sediment control purposes, that site clearing not exceed 100 acres for each phase of a solar farm’s development, which he said could have “unintended consequences of requiring additional mobilization efforts throughout the construction period, thereby extending the construction period.”

“Approving a solar cap does nothing to enhance or reinforce the powers that you all as a body already have,” said Terra Pascarosa, an environmental consultant from Virginia Beach who was one of the other speakers. “The decision could inadvertently push projects that could be rushed through the designs and the feedback process due to a race to fit under that cap, so the best projects won’t get approved, just the fastest ones to submit for the permit.”

Wade said that because Sycamore Cross’ Surry phase would be located on six parcels already approved for solar in 2021 as part of the Cavalier project, the proposed 7% cap would not impact that project if adopted.

The draft ordinance would further codify a distinction between “utility-scale” and “community-scale” solar projects, defining the latter as those generating more than 1 megawatt but no more than 5 megawatts. The draft ordinance stipulates only utility-scale solar farms would be held to a provision of the 2023 energy policy requiring their location within one mile of existing high-voltage electric transmission lines, though both community-scale and utility-scale projects would be required to go through the conditional use permit process.

That’s “consistent with what we do now, but we’re now changing it to a different section of our ordinance and incorporating it with the rest of our zoning ordinance, as before it was in a different section of our general ordinance,’” Wade said at the commission’s Sept. 23 meeting.

There’s also a proposed definition as an accessory use for “distributed solar,” which would refer to solar facilities generating less than 1 megawatt to meet on-site energy demands such as roof-mounted solar panels.

Listing distributed solar as accessory use “is not new text,” Wade said. “It is new to this section, but it is not new to Surry County because this language already exists.”