Millington solar farm granted approval for construction

The 601 acre parcel includes a fenced solar array area of 319 acres southeast of Millington in the far northeast corner of the county, according to county Principal Development Review Planner Rob Gunther.

As previously reported by this publication, the property, owned by John and Ruth Stoltzfus of Kennedyville, will be leased by Urban Grid as Jones Farm Lane Solar LLC for 35 years.

Site plan features for the proposed solar project include more than 150,000 panels, 22 inverters and transformers. The project will deliver 64 megawatts of power to the point of interconnection, Gunther said.

This plan received original concept approval in 2017 and first set of conditional use and variances in 2018, according to Gunther.

The property was previously utilized for agricultural production but the fields are currently fallow, planning staff reported at the April 11 commission meeting.

The project is located within the county’s utility scale overlay solar district.

The project’s property collector substation will collect and deliver the power to the Delmarva Power Substation that will be located on a separate lot and subdivided from the 600 acre parcel.

A portion of the project site has an existing Delmarva Power and Light transmission line easement running through it.

The property is laid out to ensure constructor workers can park on site and tractor trailers can fully enter and navigate the property without risking traffic backlogging on adjacent roads, Nick Leffner, engineer of Kimley-Horn and Associates said.

Utility scale solar projects are required to plant landscape buffers 50 feet wide where significant vegetation doesn’t already exist. The applicant has already installed buffers along Blanco Road and the southeastern property line, he said.

According to Leffner, “Almost the entire project is surrounded by existing forest in the sense of providing screening and buffering.”

The majority of the areas underneath the arrays will be grass, he said.

An annual ground cover will be put in place as a temporary stabilization during the construction. As the project near completion and electrical wiring is installed, the area will be stabilized with a permanent ground cover.

Very little topsoil will be removed from the site, he said.

The property has two listings on the Maryland listing of historic properties, the location of the former Noble House in the center, as well as the area of the Jones Farm homestead itself, he said. There is also an area of archaeological significance within the property with a 50 feet fenced buffer to be placed around the area.

Staff do not have experience with the aftermath of the project because no solar projects have been decommissioned yet, Gunther said.

“Knowing there is an expected life cycle for the project, decommissioning would happen at the end of the project,” with panels and posts removed and often recycled, Leffner said.

There is a requirement with the county to put a decommissioning bond in place in the event the project reaches the end of its usefulness or is no longer operating for whatever reason, he said.

With approval granted, construction for the Jones Farm Lane Solar project is expected to begin soon, according to Leffner.