Pine Creek Township residents hear conditional use plans for 13-acre solar farm, meeting continuance planned for Wednesday evening

By Christopher Miller

PINE CREEK TOWNSHIP – Residents of Pine Creek Township met Wednesday evening for a Conditional Use Hearing at the township building where a resident has proposed installing a solar power generation facility on part of his property.

The developers are seeking a conditional use permit to put up what will take up 13 acres into a small generation solar farm running electricity to a meter, down the Carson driveway, to a pole and fed into the main electricity grid.

The total farm area is measured between 300 to 400 acres and the solar farm would be on roughly 13 of those acres.

“The panels are quiet, require no services like a construction build-out, and are relatively low maintenance,” the developer said.

The project engineer was on hand to describe the entirety of the project from the ground up and maintenance over time.

“This is a small, 2.5 megawatt facility taking up 13 acres of the Carson farm land,” the engineer explained. “One of the concerns we had was because of the floodplain area so we pushed the whole system south, and solar panels will be above grade with the panels mounted to steel I-beams in the ground. All equipment would be above the ground. By moving the project south we moved further away from homes and away from any noise that would be created from this plant.”

“We will be installing tracker panels which all panels will face east-west and throughout the day they rotate and track the sun, giving us better solar yields. We are working to minimize glare from the panels running perpendicular to the sun. During construction there will be traffic coming in delivering panels, but after construction, there may be a technician there once a month monitoring the solar farm. We would not be breaking ground in the winter, of course depending on when all of the permits line up.”

Residents then spoke out, asking questions about the project and voicing their opinions. A thorough report of their questions and concerns will be included in the continuance story later this week. A continuance of the hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, November 13 at 6:00 p.m. at the township building.

Pine Creek Township supervisors have 45 days to issue a written decision on their verdict based on the application materials.

Those requesting to speak are urged to sign up on the sheet once entering the building.