photo by: City of Lawrence

People wait to provide public comment about draft solar farm regulations at City Hall as part of the Planning Commission's meeting on Nov. 15, 2021, which was a hybrid meeting conducted both in person and online.

Limits on the size of solar farms and the time span of permits were among the issues planners discussed Monday as they worked to draft regulations for utility-scale solar farms.

As part of its meeting Monday, the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission continued its discussion of new zoning regulations for rural Douglas County for commercial or utility-scale “solar energy conversion systems,” or solar farms. A committee has been working with planners to make revisions to the draft regulations, and committee chair Jim Carpenter said they were taking great care in that process.

“We’ve not seen a text amendment come forward like this before that is of such big scale or duration,” Carpenter said. “We are trying to work out the rules here to allow industrial scale solar out in the rural parts of the county that could be in place for 30, 50 or more years.”

Planners requested the creation of regulations for solar farms in May because they had been contacted regarding plans to develop a solar farm in rural Douglas County. As the Journal-World reported in August, the energy firm NextEra has expressed interest in building an approximately 3,000-acre solar panel farm along the county line between Douglas and Johnson counties. That project, which basically would be east and north of Baldwin City, would be one of the largest solar farms in the country. Additional energy companies, such as Savion and Evergy, have also been in contact with the county as work on the regulations has continued.

In addition to their own discussion, the commission meeting included close to two hours of public comment from those either pushing the commission to be more restrictive with their regulations or those who said some of the draft regulations were too prohibitive. Some residents in the area of the proposed NextEra project said they had already agreed to a lease, saying that they were eager to help with the transition to clean energy and continue the productive use of land that had been in their families for generations. But more than a dozen residents showed up to the meeting wearing T-shirts that asked commissioners to draft regulations to “protect our quality of life,” and urged commissioners to stick to or strengthen limitations in the draft regulations.

As it currently stands, the draft regulations state that no solar panel system shall contain more than 1,000 acres total, unless the County Commission approves an exception. Planner Mary Miller clarified that only the area covered by the solar arrays would count toward the limit, meaning that the total area of the property could be larger than 1,000 acres. She also said there was nothing in the regulations that would stop an operator from requesting multiple 1,000-acre permits. Zoning Director Tonya Voigt said that the cap had to do with the ability for staff to handle all the reviews required when processing the permit application for such a large project.

Commissioners did not reach any consensus when it came to the size limitation, but Commissioner Gary Rexroad asked how the county would approach that reality if larger scale projects were what utility providers were looking for. Commissioner Gregory Shanklin asked if there was a way for the county and the applicant to share in the costs needed to review such permit applications, and Miller said there could potentially be some options in that regard.

Commissioners are also considering the potential for a countywide cap, meaning that the size limitation would instead apply to how much of the county’s area could be covered by solar farms in general. Carpenter said that idea would be discussed further once the committee heard back from the Douglas County Food Policy Council about the anticipated future agricultural needs of the community.

The draft regulations call for solar farm projects to obtain a limited-term conditional use permit, which as currently drafted would expire after 20 years with the possibility of renewal. Some expressed concern that considering the useful life of solar panels and the length of financing terms, the 20-year time span was impractical and could be prohibitive for solar farm projects, and that a 25 or 30-year term is more common.

Other regulations under discussion include potential limits or protective provisions for areas of prime soil, as well as setback, fencing and screening requirements. The commission will continue the discussion at its meeting in January and is expected to vote on whether to advance the regulations to the County Commission for consideration sometime in February.