Both of the utility-scale solar projects that were proposed for Patrick County have been called off.
Fairy Stone Solar would have been a 12-megawatt facility on 211 acres southeast of the town of Stuart, generating enough electricity to power just over 2,000 homes. Patrick County’s board of supervisors narrowly approved it after a contentious meeting in March.
On Monday, Patrick County Administrator Beth Simms told the board that the developer, Energix Renewables, called her last week and said the project would not move forward.
Energix Renewables representatives could not be reached for comment on Monday.
Appalachian Power spokesperson Teresa Hamilton Hall said in an email to Cardinal News that all large distributed energy resource projects must undergo technical analysis to ensure that they won’t negatively impact the electric grid or the utility’s customers.
Energix wanted to connect Fairy Stone to the power company’s Stuart substation, and Appalachian’s analysis showed that the largest project that could be accommodated there would be 4 megawatts, not the 12 that Energix wanted.
“Specifically, the study found that the project would cause unacceptable voltage changes at the point where it interconnects to our system,” Hall said.
Hall said Energix has not approached the utility about developing a smaller project at that location.
The second proposed solar project, called Moscato, would have been 13.2 megawatts on 120 acres just outside Woolwine.
In February, the county’s planning commission recommended that supervisors approve Moscato, but the project was canceled before it could go before the board for consideration. Simms told supervisors on June 10 that she had received a call the prior week from an Energix representative who told her that the company was not moving forward with it.
No other utility-scale solar projects have been submitted to Patrick County for consideration, Simms said in an email to Cardinal News.
Fairy Stone’s 3-2 vote of approval by supervisors on March 11 came after nearly two hours of discussion during a public hearing with two dozen speakers.
It was the first utility-scale solar facility that supervisors approved for the county of about 17,600 people on the border of Virginia and North Carolina.
An Energix Renewables representative told the board at that meeting that Fairy Stone would provide $2.48 million in tax revenue to the county over 40 years plus an upfront $198,000 payment.
Of the two dozen residents who spoke at the meeting, only one favored the project. The rest cited concerns about the solar project’s impact on scenic views and tourism, about whether the panels would last as long as promised, and about the project’s potential harm to soil and water.
Southside Virginia’s flat, relatively inexpensive land has caught the eye of solar companies in recent years, but residents and developers have clashed over concerns about such projects’ impacts on agricultural land availability, the environment, property values and scenery.
A state-versus-local dynamic has also begun to emerge, with Virginia lawmakers floating possible new rules regarding who should have authority to approve new solar projects as the commonwealth works to meet renewable energy goals set by the Virginia Clean Economy Act of 2020.
The impact that solar farms have on the local environment while they’re under construction has also been under scrutiny. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has fined Energix Renewables nearly $350,000 over the past three years, most recently in May, for improper handling of erosion and stormwater runoff at sites in Southside and Southwest Virginia.