Solar Farm Land Requirements - Everything Needed to Lease Land for Solar Farm Development
New England has one of the highest solar adoption rates per capita in the US, in no small part thanks to state and federal incentives. However, most homeowners are installing solar on the individual level. In other words, they're using a small bank of solar panels to power their own homes, specifically.
What if there was a way to supply solar power to more of your community, including renters and low-income families? A solar farm can generate enough solar power to offset a large percentage of your community's nonrenewable energy while lowering countless utility bills.
You may want to lease land for a solar farm in your community. First, you need to understand the solar farm land requirements.
Read on for our primer on solar farm development and the solar field land requirements you must meet to lease land for solar development.
Plenty of Acreage
As the name suggests, solar farms are expansive, as they need to house hundreds of large solar panels with enough room between each panel for professional maintenance. To generate 1 megawatt of solar power, you'll need about four to five acres of available land. 20 acres can be used to create a small-scale solar farm, but many utility-scale solar farms take up 100 acres or more.
Contrary to popular belief, you can create solar farms next to in-use farmland. In fact, solar farms are a great way to make use of land with poor soil or PPF contamination. If a portion of your farmland is no longer ideal for farming, this is your sign to keep learning about solar field land requirements.
Appropriate Land
As you might expect, solar farms require a good amount of sunlight in order to generate sufficient energy. This means that the land must be free of large growth that would hinder sun exposure.
Ideally, solar developers are looking for land with a limited incline. Flat land can accommodate solar trackers, a type of solar panel that is able to pivot along with the natural shifting of the sun. However, a slight incline may not prohibit you from solar farm development, as photovoltaics can be built into a slope or incline and still harness a decent amount of energy.
The land will also need to have limited wetlands. This is both for the sake of the solar panels and equipment and for the safety of your community's water. In some states, building solar farms on or near a wetland will require additional permitting that isn't always easy to attain.
Partnership With a Solar Farm Developer
There are two ways to build a solar farm on your land and either way, you must have the legal right to use that land. In other words, you can't build a solar farm on an unclaimed lot, even if you've had access to it for years.
The first way to build a solar farm is to take on the entire project, yourself. This includes developing, building, and maintaining the solar farm while working directly with the utility company to get your solar power on the grid. This is a massive undertaking that is essentially like starting a business from scratch.
The most popular option is to lease your land for solar field development. This approach is hands-off and ensures proper permitting and legal compliance as long as you work with a reputable solar farm developer.
Proximity to Needed Infrastructure
There's a lot of mystification about solar energy, in part because in the grand scheme of human history, it's pretty new. Though solar energy comes from a different source than nonrenewable energy, it still needs access to the right infrastructure to go from collection to usage. The term for this is interconnection, which is the process of linking solar panels to the existing power grid.
The cost of operations go up the further your solar farm is from that grid, so it's in everyone's best interest to build solar farms that have reasonable proximity to the needed infrastructure. The first thing is three-phase power, and you want to be within about 1,000 feet. The second is a substation, and you want to be within about two miles.
What if you're so far away that even increased operating costs can't connect your farm to the grid? We can build this infrastructure from scratch, but that's going to take a lot of time and a major investment that not all developers will want to take on.
Due Diligence and Proper Permitting
Finally, there are a lot of laws and regulations to consider before moving forward with solar field development. The good thing about leasing your land is that the developer will do due diligence to make sure that the farm won't violate state or municipal regulations.
What kind of regulations are we talking about? A good example is environmental regulations that are meant to ensure that solar farms don't, for example, disturb important natural habitats. These laws are subject to change, and we may see stricter regulations in Maine and elsewhere in the coming years.
Once you've completed the due diligence process, it's time to acquire the proper permits. These permits can come from state, regional, and local governments, and they're not always easy to navigate. Fortunately, your developer will know how to get these, too.
Work With Dirigo to Lease Land for Solar Farm Development
Do you want to lease land for solar farm development? Working with a land developer like Dirigo is the best way to go. We can take care of all of the steps needed to ensure that your land is suitable for solar farm usage.
If you're ready to get the ball rolling, contact us today. We can't wait to find out more about your land and help you to give back to your community and the planet at large.