Then, he said, “we’ll ask neighbors, ‘Is it OK if we put this here?’”
The local acceptance matters. At this point, solar development is “not really a question of state by state anymore,” said Pol Lezcano, the director of energy and renewables research at the real estate and consulting firm CBRE.
“It’s more like a county-by-county issue,” he said.
The economic development agency in Decatur County lured Doral to the region in hopes of generating more tax income and finding a way for farmers to diversify revenue.
“They respect landowner rights as sacred,” Cohen said. “The officials in the county are also very professional and see this as a generational uplift for everyone. They’ve been incredibly friendly. They convinced us to come, and it worked.”
Part of Doral’s appeal was that Lambs Draw may, in fact, involve lambs. The company plans to incorporate agrivoltaics, with crops planted between rows of panels and livestock employed to graze and keep the grasses trimmed. Cohen said the company and its landlords haven’t yet decided what to plant.
Despite the acreage, Lambs Draw’s 270 MW is smaller than the Philadelphia-based Doral’s typical 500 MW project. The size, Cohen said, is limited by what the local power lines — which connect to the Southwest Power Pool grid system — can handle.
“Originally, we wanted it to be more, but ultimately the grid is a constraint,” he said. “It’s healthy at 270, and that’s where we’re going to keep it.”
Nationwide, Doral has 400 MW of solar in operation, another gigawatt under construction, and more than 15 GW in the queue.
The company hasn’t yet selected the panels for Lambs Draw. But its 1.3 GW Mammoth Solar project currently underway in Indiana uses panels from manufacturers in Texas and India. Doral expects to make a similar deal for Lambs Draw, allowing the company to obtain panels quickly enough to access sunsetting federal tax credits and avoid new restrictions on imports from China.
“Solar is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for rural America, and places like northwestern Kansas have an opportunity to have a competitive advantage,” Cohen said. “They have something other people don’t have: flat, tillable farm fields with a strong grid connection.”
{
if ($event.target.classList.contains(‘hs-richtext’)) {
if ($event.target.textContent === ‘+ more options’) {
$event.target.remove();
open = true;
}
}
}”
>
Great Job Alexander Kaufman & the Team @ Canary Media Source link for sharing this story.
