Following months of controversy, the largest agrivoltaic solar farm in the United States has won the go-ahead from the Ohio Power Siting Board to begin construction next year. The 6,050-acre Oak Run project, which will use mostly prime farmland for both farm production and solar energy generation, is estimated to cost $1 billion to build in Madison County, west of Columbus. Most of the county, 88%, is designated farmland and primarily planted in corn and soybeans.
Once the project is complete, solar panels will cover about two-thirds of the land with the remaining acres – rows between panels and the perimeter of the property – devoted to sheep grazing and crops. The utility-scale project will include a 300-megawatt energy storage system and generate 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 170,000 households.
The developer – Kansas City, Missouri-based Savion, a subsidiary of Shell New Energies U.S. – has a purchase option with several landowners and plans to buy the land before beginning construction. Current property holders include Bill Gates’ Midwest Farms LLC of Monterey, Louisiana.
“There are a few tenant and landowner farmers currently farming the site,” said Sarah Moser, head of farm operations and agrivoltaics for Savion, but going forward, “Oak Run solar project intends to contract directly with local farmers for agrivoltaics.”
The permit requires Oak Run to have at least 1,000 sheep and produce crops on 2,000 acres in the first year of operation. Within eight years, at least 70% of the farmable project area, or about 4,000 acres, will need to include agrivoltaics.
Savion currently has more than 21 gigawatts of solar projects in development in 30 U.S. states; all its potential solar projects are evaluated for the option to incorporate agrivoltaics, Moser said. Shell acquired Savion in 2021 as part of its move from fossil fuels toward alternative energy.
Nationally, solar capacity has grown at an average annual rate of 22% in recent years due to federal policies, declining costs and increasing demand for clean electricity. Last year, U.S. solar growth was its fastest ever due in part to Inflation Reduction Act tax incentives and investment from Wall Street, including subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway and hedge fund D.E. Shaw.
More than 179 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity has been installed nationwide, enough to power roughly 33 million homes. California has the most cumulative solar installations with about 46.9 gigawatts, followed by Texas with 22.87 GW, according to data from the Solar Energy Industries Association. Ohio has 2.27 GW.
Samantha Levy, AFTSamantha Levy, conservation and climate policy manager at American Farmland Trust (AFT), said 83% of solar development is likely to be on farm and ranch land, "with nearly half of that on the most productive farmland because these are attractive sites for developers. They are flat and less expensive to develop.” Instead of buying land outright, many solar projects offer landowners 20- to 40-year leases, some with options to renew, and “solar developers are willing to pay on the order of magnitudes more than a farmer would be able to pay to rent the land,” she added.
Lucrative solar leases offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for farmer landowners who face economic challenges or don’t have a successor to take over the farm, Levy noted. At the same time, though, as “projects get bigger and larger amounts of land are taken out of farming, it affects the entire economic ecosystem of the host community. It can have a ripple effect.”
The Oak Run project has generated intense debate in Ohio, with more than 500 public comments, both for and against, submitted to the state's Power Siting Board. Residents of the three townships closest to the project – Monroe, Somerford and Deercreek – voiced strong opposition, citing loss of farmland, rural character, property values and potential environmental impacts as reasons for concern. Madison County said it was overrun with solar projects, including four smaller projects that have also been approved. Despite the opposition, the Siting Board voted 7-2 to approve the Oak Run project.
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Those in favor of the project included environmentalists, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and labor unions. Oak Run is expected to provide 1,500 temporary construction jobs and 60 permanent positions. According to Savion, the project "has the potential to create a monumental influx of tax revenue benefitting Madison County, host townships, local school districts and the broader community, including an estimated $7.2 million in new tax revenue every year over its expected 35-year operating life ($252 million total).”
Dale Arnold, director of energy, utility, and local government policy for the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, said OFBF has members on both sides of the issue. “Agrivoltaics is a rather new concept in Ohio. Agrivoltaics has been incorporated in projects in New York, Pennsylvania and New England, but there we were measuring projects in the tens of acres, where here we are measuring in the hundreds of thousands of acres. We will encounter things that have not been encountered in New York, Pennsylvania and New England.”
OFBF has been involved in 110 energy projects, including wind and solar. On March 6, 2023, OFBF filed a Motion to Intervene as a Party on Record in Oak Run’s permitting proceeding to negotiate a number of provisions on behalf of its members, Arnold noted.
In its Motion to Intervene, OFBF said, “Residents in rural neighborhoods want assurances that environmental considerations – setbacks, noise, traffic, aesthetic and other factors – are addressed with effective facility design and placement. Area businesses want to make sure that a solar facility in the community enhances local commerce and economic development.”
Conditions of the permit that Oak Run must follow in addition to the grazing and crop requirements include perimeter fencing, setbacks of 150 feet to roadways and non-participating property boundaries, and setbacks of 300 feet to non-participating homes.
The next step in the process is to see if any parties of record in the proceeding file a motion for rehearing or appeal concerning any part of the decision. If no appeal is filed, the developer will engage in the technical development steps leading up to construction, according to Arnold. If appeals are filed, the Ohio Power Siting Board will consider the appeals and formally accept and correct its decision or deny the appeal. If an appeal is denied, the party of record has the right to have its appeal considered by the Ohio Supreme Court, Arnold said.
Despite controversy and challenges to obtain approval, Savion remains happy with the location. “The site continues to be an ideal location for a large-scale solar project due to proximity to available transmission capacity, landowner and community interest, economic benefits, evaluation of site suitability and the future opportunity for implementing agrivoltaics,” Moser said.
According to some parameters, though, it isn’t 100% ideal; among principles adopted by AFT for agrivoltaics are priorities for siting on buildings and land not well suited for farming. Other AFT principles include safeguarding the ability for land to be used for agriculture in the future by policies and practices to protect soil health, especially during construction and decommissioning.
“Agriculture and solar energy can coexist if appropriate planning is undertaken,” said Levy, who noted that it doesn’t help a host community for a farmer to bring in a herd of sheep twice a year to graze. According to the Financial Times, a farmer typically visits a solar site two or three times a year with about 200 sheep per 100 acres and is paid $1 per acre per visit. The American Solar Grazing Association estimates that 80,000 sheep currently graze 100,000 acres on 500 solar power sites in 27 states. These sheep help clear the area under and around the solar panels.
A more beneficial project would have sheep raised on the land, a condition of the Oak Run permit, and one where the infrastructure is already in place in the community. In 2022, Ohio was the 11th largest sheep-producing state in the country with 92,000 head, according to USDA data.
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