For 24 years, Wanda Harry has looked out her back door and seen central Pennsylvania’s picturesque Path Valley. For the past two months, she’s also seen a massive construction site.
It’s an eyesore, she says, transforming more than 700 acres of farmland across parts of Fannett Township for a web of solar panels. This rural slice of northern Franklin County didn’t have a zoning ordinance to prevent the project, nor do upset residents feel officials gave them proper notice.
Thus, a landowner was easily able to lease land to the solar company, which expects to finish the project early next year and generate power for 35 years.
“I sit out in the morning to drink a cup of coffee and could look out across the mountains and across the fields,” Harry said. “Now I’m going to be sitting there looking at solar panels.”
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After Harry talked with her friend, Mary Wohler, who lives in North Middleton Township, Wohler is determined to keep big solar from overwhelming her slice of Cumberland County, too.
“I think the regulations need to be tough enough that it’s not easy for them just to come in and set up and take over the community,” Wohler said.
A township on the front lines
North Middleton Township is one of multiple local municipalities reconsidering where large solar installations can go. It’s a recent “organic” push in the county, said Zachary Rice, the township’s solicitor, as governments notice the technology creep into Franklin and Adams counties.
“In the world of land development and zoning, it’s better to be proactive than reactive,” Rice said.
Solar is currently allowed in the township on a conditional basis, but its planning commission is in the early stages of drafting an ordinance to likely limit utility-scale solar projects on farmland.
As a starting point, it’s using a template from the Cumberland County planning office, updated last year, with recommended regulations. The primary concern is “principal solar,” which the county defines as installations of more than 10 kilowatt-hours (kWh).
These are usually ground-mounted arrays that, at their largest, are informally called solar farms. They tend to be placed near transmission lines. Smaller arrays, like something a homeowner would put on a roof, are “accessory solar” and not regulated as strongly.
North Middleton’s planning commissioners and supervisors brainstormed last week on how to limit solar in the township’s agricultural and rural resource land, which Rick Hoover – a member of both boards – said is about 60% of the township.
“What are the benefits to us, to the town and its residents?” Hoover said. “That’s what we need to look at.”
Officials discussed limiting solar farms to land zoned for industrial use or allowing it on agricultural land with the lowest soil quality. They could also require solar farms to be a certain distance from a transmission line or substation, and they could set a maximum number of acres for any project.
Landowners can make millions by leasing to solar companies, and municipalities can still levy taxes. But utility-scale solar projects send electricity to the grid to be used elsewhere, unlike how a homeowner, school or business may have panels for their local needs.
A 700-acre solar farm near Gettysburg, for example, will send its energy to Philadelphia and provide a quarter of that city’s electricity.
Each municipality makes its own difficult calculus on solar, Cumberland County Planning Director Kirk Stoner told The Sentinel, as leaders weigh the “competing policy priorities” of renewable energy versus farmland preservation.
“That’s where you might see inconsistent regulation from one municipality to another,” he said.
Basking in the sun
Solar power has exploded in the U.S. in the past decade. The nation’s installed capacity in megawatts has grown more than thirteenfold in 10 years, according to data from the Solar Energy Industries Association.
The trend is upward for all forms: residential, commercial, community and utility.
That last category, which covers the largest projects like Fannett Township’s, is growing fastest by far. In Pennsylvania, the association’s data shows the amount of utility-scale solar installed in 2023 was more than all categories installed in 2022 combined.
The cost to install solar in the state has fallen by nearly half in the past decade, despite a period where fracking made natural gas more competitive. Pennsylvania, as of the end of last year, produces enough solar energy to power nearly 200,000 homes.
Although that’s only 0.62% of the state’s electricity, the solar association’s figures said. Pennsylvania is far behind neighboring states in solar capacity like New York, New Jersey and Ohio, while sunnier California, Texas, Florida and North Carolina lead the nation.
Large solar fields weren’t really a local consideration when Stoner became Cumberland County’s planning commissioner 22 years ago. But federal and state incentives to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels have been supporting a growing market.
“We’ve seen the benefits of some of this investment in sustainability,” Stoner said, as more municipalities and landowners turn space into savings – both of money and the climate.
Cumberland County ranks 13th in Pennsylvania in maximum solar output, according to The Sentinel’s analysis of data from the Generation Attribute Tracking System. Buyers and sellers nationwide use this database to assess the solar market.
At peak capacity, the county’s nearly 2,500 solar installations can produce more than 42 megawatts of electricity, according to the database. Franklin County leads the state at nearly 300 megawatts possible, thanks in part to the 150-megawatt Great Cove solar array near McConnellsburg.
Notable solar projects in Cumberland County include ground-mounted arrays at the Carlisle and Cumberland Valley school districts that have been powering school buildings for more than a decade.
Dickinson College also has 12 acres of panels by its athletic fields, and the Giant Co. has nearly 7,000 panels on the roof of its headquarters and on five adjacent acres to offset all of the building’s electricity needs.
Carlisle Events recently announced it will put solar panels on the roofs of the fairgrounds grandstand and expo center by the end of the year. A Mechanicsburg company, Solar Renewable Energy, along with Harrisburg-based GreenWorks Development, are the partners.
The cost to install and maintain solar panels has plummeted so much in the last 10 years, said GreenWorks CEO Doug Neidich, that when coupled with robust government incentives, Americans are living in the “very front end” of a golden age of solar in an increasingly “energy-conscious world.”
Neidich’s company promotes itself as the largest commercial solar developer in Pennsylvania, and its duties include marketing and advocacy. Utility-scale solar gets a lot of pushback, he said, although his company focuses on midsized projects like arrays for schools, businesses and hospitals.
The cost savings and climate benefits of solar are clear, however, even if massive solar farms remain “a political football,” Neidich said.
“Environmental stewardship is a big deal,” he said. “Although, I don’t talk about that in groups unless I know I’m in a very friendly group, because there’s some people that don’t agree with that at all.”
Advice from Fannett Township
Despite the upsides, utility-scale solar still “affects the whole community,” Wohler said, because it changes its landscape and character.
Earthmoving in Fannett Township began two months ago, and residents are complaining of muddy runoff from the construction sites and vehicles tracking dirt onto roads.
Drivers have gotten flat tires from stones, resident Mark Mellott told The Sentinel, and he said crews’ burning of trees to clear space for solar panels has caused plumes of smoke that hurt air quality.
Mellott’s home borders one of the construction sites on three sides, and with the township’s lack of setback ordinances, he said panels will be just 70 feet from his property line.
“Who’s going to want to even purchase a place like this now?” he said of his property.
Long-term, Harry worries what may happen to the soil under the solar arrays, how animals’ movements could be disrupted and how water may flow differently. And broadly, multiple opponents said, less farmland means less food.
Fannett Township residents also worry about noise when the panels are up and running. Solar panels themselves usually don’t make a sound, but the inverter – a larger metal box that feeds the electricity to the grid – can buzz or hum.
Some of the scariest concerns people may have about solar, however, are misinformation pushed by the fossil fuel industry, Neidich said. They include the claim that panels leach chemicals into the ground on which they operate.
Unlike North Middleton Township, which has been openly crafting its ordinance since the beginning, Fannett Township residents said their supervisors didn’t tell the public about the solar farm there until it was approved.
They plan to sue those officials for violating transparency laws, but the project may be inevitable. Their biggest advice for people in Cumberland County is to show up to meetings and pay close attention to what officials are doing.
Wohler is already heeding that call.
“Make the regulations tough enough or put them someplace where they aren’t going to be offensive to a lot of people,” she urged supervisors last month. “I just want you to think about more than lining somebody’s pocket.”
The draft ordinance already requires companies to put enough money down up-front to cover the estimated cost of decommissioning the project. If the company goes bankrupt and dissolves, for example, the township would be able to pay to remove the panels.
Think of it like an apartment security deposit, but on a giant scale.
“That’s a big financial commitment for a company to make,” Rice said, “so I think it also ensures that you’re going to be dealing with serious companies.”
Green future
It will be months before North Middleton Township has an ordinance in place, Rice said, but completely banning solar or even limiting it to a small area unfeasible for development is illegal under state law.
“You’re going to have to put somewhere on the map where it’s allowed and somewhere where it’s not,” he told planning commissioners.
Once commissioners complete the ordinance, the next steps are a review by the county planning department and then a public meeting of the board of supervisors, which will vote on whether to enact the ordinance.
Whether utility-scale solar is successful long-term throughout Cumberland County will depend on the grants, tax credits and other incentives available, Stoner said, because they help offset costs to install and maintain.
The durability of the panels also matters. Their estimated lifespan is currently about 30-35 years, the U.S. Department of Energy said, so only time will tell how much upkeep and replacements drive up costs.
Politics may also steer solar’s fate, Stoner said, since projects that could help the climate and boost a municipality’s coffers may be overlooked because the issue is polarizing.
Cumberland County is looking at solar to possibly power its main courthouse buildings, the prison or public safety buildings, he said. But money – more than engineering or environmental stewardship – will be the deciding factor.
“I think the county will be pro-solar if our balance sheet is saying it’s a good move for us,” Stoner said.