The last time a company applied to develop a solar farm in Fauquier County, the project was shot down by the county planning board out of concern that it would take too much of the county’s agricultural land. That was in April. Now another company is pitching a site 20 times bigger, apparently hoping that its contributions to the county will seal the deal.
David Stimson, an associate developer for AES Clean Energy, a global company headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, described his company’s proposal during a June 17 presentation to the Warrenton Rotary Club. It’s known as Fitch Solar -- a 100-megawatt array on 1,000 acres of farmland in southern Fauquier.
The presentation was slim on details about the solar farm itself; AES plans to apply for county permits later in the year. Stimson did say the project would be sited on seven parcels of private land between Morrisville and Bealeton, and the solar farm would feed its electricity into the grid at the Morrisville Dominion Power substation. He said the panels would take up about 800 of the sites’ 1,000 acres, that views of its panels would be screened by trees, and that the ground beneath them would be planted with environmentally friendly cover.
He was more specific on what this solar farm could give to the community. He said the project would add $4.1 million in property tax and $3.9 million in real estate taxes to county coffers, which he said is nearly nine times what the land is now generating. It would pump an additional $930,000 annually in labor income into the economy with the 10 to 12 fulltime jobs it will create, he said.
In addition, he said his company would provide financial support to programs and projects that the county valued. AES spokesperson Lara Hamsher said Stimson was starting to build a relationship with the community to “get that input of what's happening locally that we can kind of add value to and maximize impact.”
The offer to give back to the county appears to be in line with a new state law that takes effect July 1; it requires companies proposing solar projects to schedule a meeting with county officials to reach what is called a “siting agreement.” This agreement may include the company’s mitigation of the impact of the solar farm, cash payments to the county’s capital improvement plan or its budget or assistance to enhance local broadband.
Another state law passed in April 2020 allows localities to assess solar farms with a revenue bill of $1,400 per megawatt, with some exceptions. Thus the 100-megawatt farm proposed by AES could raise as much as $140,000 for the county.
Some solar companies were offering givebacks before the law was passed. For instance, when a company that AES now owns started work on the 485-megawatt Spotsylvania Solar Energy Center in 2019, it committed to funding that county’s high-priority projects. The company, sPower, gave $200,000 to Mary Washington Health System, $50,000 to a local community relief fund and nearly $15,000 for broadband in Spotsylvania County public schools, according to news reports. sPower was acquired by AES last year and was folded into AES’s U.S. Clean Energy Division.
Stimson said at the Rotary meeting that his company had allocated a total of $20 million toward community development in Spotsylvania County, including funding for the Rappahannock Area YMCA, creating new classes at Germanna Community College and improving local water lines.
Stimson and Hamsher declined to put a dollar value on what the company might give in Fauquier, though Hamsher said AES’s investment in the county would be based on a percentage of the megawatts of the project.
At Thursday’s meeting, Stimson told the Rotarians: “We want to ask you, how can we best serve your community?” However, he did not ask for specific suggestions at the meeting and the Rotarians did not offer any. In an interview later, he declined to call the giveback offers “sweeteners,” saying his company just planned to present an application that was appropriate for Fauquier.
AES is a Fortune 500 global energy firm that operates in 16 countries. Its portfolio ranges from coal-fired generating plants to hydroelectric systems to solar and wind power operations.
Company spokesperson Hamsher said the company has about 385 operating solar installations in 16 states across the U.S. She said AES has five solar farms in Virginia – all of them associated with the Spotsylvania Solar Energy Center, which sells most of its electricity to Microsoft -- and Stimson said AES has two other projects underway elsewhere.
Robert Lee, a Fauquier County planning commission member (Marshall District) who is also a Rotarian, pointed out to Simpson that his planning board on April 15 had rejected a much smaller solar farm – on 40 acres near Bealeton – because of concerns that “too much solar will erode the agricultural quality of the community.” At that meeting, the commission seemed particularly concerned that the smaller project would be eliminating prime agricultural land.
Stimson said the quality of the land they hoped to develop had not yet been assessed, but of the 1,000 acres they propose to use, about 600 acres are under cultivation – 400 in corn and soybeans and 200 in hay. “Any farmland that we take out of production, we want to put some sort of benefit that equals that amount of loss [back] into the community,” he said.
The county’s concern with approving solar farms appears to have its roots in the comprehensive plan, which emphasizes preservation of Fauquier’s rural economy and culture. In addition, zoning rules require that solar panels be set back from other properties and roads, that they are screened from view by trees or other buffers and that solar farm owners put money into escrow to cover the dismantlement of the project when its panels’ lifetimes expire, usually in 25 to 30 years.
Supervisors are most concerned, it seems, that solar farms do not shrink the county’s agricultural base. “I don’t want to see them eat up a lot of agricultural land,” said Supervisor Chris Butler in April. His Lee District contains farmland conducive to solar farming and is where most of the AES farm would be built. “The cattle can’t eat solar panels, and neither can you nor I,” he said.
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June 23, 2021 at 08:00PM
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Energy company hopes contributions to county's priorities will clear way for solar project - Fauquier Times
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