Sussex County staff is tracking 59 conditional uses, or CUs, related to solar arrays or panels in the county, but only some have been issued building permits.
Of those, 14 have yet to build any panels to begin farming solar energy, despite getting the go ahead from County Council.
Commissioner Matt Lloyd asks if that explains a recent surge of applications from solar developers.
“Just understanding that a percentage of them will fall off, do you think they’re bringing us extra applications knowing that only a few of them might actually make it to the end?” he said.
Planning and Zoning Director Jamie Whitehouse says it’s possible,
“I can’t speak for the development community but there’s definitely more coming to us than we’re seeing actually implemented. There’s a logic to what you’re saying, [but] I don’t know that as fact.” he said.
While each project is different, Delmarva’s interconnectivity queue shows over four years between application and in-service dates for some.
Whitehouse points to the time it takes to get an approval for interconnection as part of the issue.
“There’s a chicken and the egg scenario that goes on in that, in order to submit for interconnectivity approval, you have to have your land use approval effectively in place." he said. "And this is one of the reasons we saw such a volume of new conditional uses all coming in is that they have to get approval from the county first, and then you can apply for -and receive- interconnection approval, and only then can you go through the building permit process and build it.”
Conditional use approvals also expire after three years in Sussex County, which could create the need for a developer to apply twice for the same project.
Council Vice President John Reiley also took issue with the number of proposed acres -3,600- that would be taken up by solar farms.
"To me, this is more of an industrial application than an AR-1 type use and it really concerns me... that's a substantial amount of land that's being lost- open land, open space, open farmland."
He, and other council members, asked Whitehouse draft incentives to encourage rooftop solar installations in the future.
