After the Sussex County Planning & Zoning Commission reviewed a list of 58 solar power project applications received since late 2020 at its May 6 meeting, staff plans to ask if Sussex County Council wants to pursue rule changes.

P&Z commissioners in March expressed frustration about solar power projects – in part because they replace farmland and forests – and asked the Planning & Zoning Department to gather information on them.

Department Director Jamie Whitehouse provided commissioners with a summary of solar project applications submitted since November 2020. Of the 58 applications, 37 were backed by P&Z and approved by county council.

Fifteen of the approved projects have received building permits and proceeded toward construction. Developers of the other approved projects have not indicated they will move forward at this point, Whitehouse said.

P&Z commissioners and county staff said a lot of time and effort goes into reviewing projects, many of which have gone nowhere after developers submit an application or receive approval. Those projects also tie up land that could be developed for useful purposes, they said

Fourteen applications submitted since June 2024 are pending approval, but only two of those have had hearings before P&Z.

Seven of the 58 applications were withdrawn by developers. Whitehouse said other projects that were approved may have been abandoned without notice to the county. 

His department included the total parcel acreage in its summary information. About 4,000 acres were included in the applications. Solar arrays typically cover only a portion of a property. Information on the portion of project sites dedicated to solar arrays was not readily available on 35 of the projects, he said.

“How do we keep considering these without knowing whether they’re actually viable or not?” Assistant County Attorney Vincent Robertson said.

“There’s a chicken-and-the-egg scenario with the way the approval process works,” Whitehouse said. “In order to get interconnection approval, if you are a utility provider, you have to have all your ducks in a row in terms of land-use approvals. So, in essence, we’re not the final stop. We’re an interim step along the way.”

After county approval, projects proceed to utilities for approval of connection to the power grid, he said. Some projects that were withdrawn did not make it through that process.

“I wonder if there’s feedback we need to give to the state legislature around some requirements for utilities to meet,” Commissioner G. Scott Collins said. “It’s not our role.”

P&Z Commission Chair Holly Wingate said the commission has no direction on which conditions are appropriate for it to place on solar projects.

Collins expressed frustration over the loss of forest and farmland to solar power projects. He said there are options in which solar panels share space with other activities to conserve land.

Robertson said for a typical conditional use, the applicant has three years to advance the project. There are no limits on solar projects. 

Whitehouse said he did not want to speculate on the cause, but he has seen there was a wave of solar project applications in 2020 and 2021, then a decline. In the past 12 months, there has been a second wave, he said.

Robertson and Whitehouse said they will check if county council wants to pursue changes to codes related to solar projects.