Solar farm regs taking shape in wake of LIPA push

PSEG-LI pays solar operators a fixed rate for every solar kilowatt-hour generated over a 20-year power purchase agreement between the owner and PSEG-LI. Buying solar energy means the utility produces cleaner power. While rates are not expected to fall as a result of the work, “adding solar capacity is considered an alternative to building larger generating plants,” according to a PSEG spokesperson.

Those paying start-up costs for solar projects are eligible for financial assistance. The federal government offers a 30 percent tax credit until the end of 2016 for all who construct the panels, whether on residential or commercial property.

A national solar energy trade association has called the incentive “one of the most important federal policy mechanisms to support the deployment of solar energy in the United States.”

One of S Power’s proposed projects would consist of 30,000 panels in Calverton and yield 6.3 MW of energy a year. Proposed for industrial land, the project would be allowed under the town’s proposed regulations.

S Power’s Mr. Wiedemann dismissed concerns about misusing farmland for a solar farm by noting that LIPA wouldn’t be able to allow too many such operations, even if it wanted to.

“There’s a limit as to how much solar energy can be delivered to any given substation on Long Island,” he said.

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Melissa Daniels is one farmer hoping to get solar panels on part of the 40-acre farm she currently leases and would like to buy.

Vice president of Sound Avenue’s Plant Connection in Riverhead, a wholesale nursery, she wants to sublease part of this land to a company that would sell the energy back to PSEG.

“Getting that solar farm is one of the only ways I could afford to buy the land,” Ms. Daniels said. “The extra income will make it easier to get a mortgage. If they take that away from us, it’s going to make it very hard for us to buy the land.”

The 10 acres where the solar panels would be installed cannot be used for agriculture because they were quarantined by the state years ago, she said, due to contamination issues.

But the solar operation would be prohibited under the zoning amendments up for a hearing next Tuesday.

Joe Gergela, former executive director of the Long Island Farm Bureau, says he’ll be speaking out against Riverhead’s proposal, though he didn’t oppose Southold’s. “We find it offensive that farmers with full building rights on their land in agricultural protection zones not be allowed to have any solar,” Mr. Gergela said. “This could be a new farmland preservation program.”

The only speaker against Southold’s proposal at the May 6 public hearing was Mr. Wiedemann, whose company has a contract with PSEG to build a solar installation on agriculturally zoned land on Route 48 in Southold. That project will no longer be allowed under the town’s recent zone changes.

Riverhead’s agricultural advisory committee seems to agree with Mr. Gergela, according to Councilman George Gabrielsen. The Town Board liaison to the committee, he said the advisory board recently seemed to want to keep open the possibility of solar farms on agricultural land — though the committee stopped short of making an official recommendation.

The town’s farmland preservation committee, however, has taken a position against allowing solar panels on farms where the development rights have been preserved.

Mr. Gabrielsen, a farmer himself and one of five Town Board members who are considering the new regulations, said, “This will accelerate the demise of the farms.”

Mr. Russell expressed similar sentiments.

“The goal of the agricultural chapter of our master plan says that we need to make sure good farmland stays in farming,” he said. “We don’t want to displace farmers who need access to rentable farmland with these solar arrays.”