With rising electric bills Ohioans weigh the cost of solar farms 

Credit: Ohio Citizens Action 

Clark County is suing to stop the project backed by hundreds of residents. Many showed up at a Public Utilities Commission of Ohio hearing March 26 to complain. This is only one step in the process. An evidentiary hearing is scheduled for April 16 in Columbus. 

Farmer Bill Agle is watching the situation closely. He takes Brick by Brick into his dining room, dubbed “the war room,” where he holds weekly meetings. 

”This table was built out of beams that came out of one of our barns and I had a craftsman build this table for us. It’s a family table. We sit around here every Wednesday night, our group called “Harmony Farmland Preservation Coalition. We sit here and we’ve talked about legislation. We’ve talked about how do we get ahold of our congressmen and our senators and different people to help us try and oppose this?” (Agle doesn’t call these projects solar farms because he says they are not farms) 

Agle and Commissioner Rick Lohnes are hopeful the project will be cancelled. Lohnes acknowledges that counties stand to make a lot of money from solar farms. But he says, “I’m not sure personally that the county governments should be looking to raise money. And personally, philosophically, I couldn’t tolerate raising money destroying good farmland.”  

Back outside, Farmer Bill hops on his gator truck, to show us how close Sloopy Solar will be. 

“When you talk about prime farmland, that’s as good as it gets out through there…and farmland is irreplaceable. I mean, there’s only 3 percent of the world that is what they call prime farmland. Brazil’s got some and the United States has got some. But 98 percent of this project, our Clark Soil and Water District, used USDA soil studies, and they said 98 percent of this project is prime farmland. That’s why we don’t want to see it.”  

Bill knows by not leasing his farm to solar he’s giving up a lot of guaranteed income. Maybe $1,000 an acre or more. That’s one of the big draws for farmers who have plenty of down years.   

Agle says he isn’t against solar, just using prime farmland for it. He and his wife have preserved all of their 650 acres through the Tecumseh Land Trust in Yellow Springs. That prevents it from ever being developed and designates it as farmland.  

Developers eye Ohio’s cheap farmland 

One county over, about fifty miles away is Fox Squirrel Solar. This Madison County solar facility is Ohio’s largest and among the biggest east of the Mississippi with one point four million solar panels spread across 34-hundred acres. Developer and owner of Fox Squirrel Solar is EDF Power Solutions. 

EDF’s Director of Regulatory and Legislative Affairs Adam Sokolski says the state is ripe for all types of energy. “Ohio for solar is particularly attractive because Ohio has a lot of manufacturing, a lot of demand for electricity, right? So that makes Ohio a good place to build solar. Ohio has vast ounce of land that are flat, that are not super rocky, making solar an appropriate land use for energy development.” 

The pros and cons of solar farms 

Many agree that the electricity produced by solar farms is far more environmentally friendly than burning fossil fuels to create steam that drives turbines. And it makes electricity generally cheaper. 

The financial advisory company Lazard found there is an important caveat. “Persistently low natural gas prices, rising renewable energy costs and higher electricity demand have made existing gas plants economically attractive compared with renewables.” (it made these statements pre-Iran war) 

However there are complaints, some substantiated: 

1. It takes valuable farmland out of the mix. 

2. Solar projects only last 25-30 years. 

3. The solar panels are easily damaged by storms. 

4. They can harm local wildlife. 

5. There is a constant hum. 

6. It raises the temperature. 

7. They have to be cleaned and that takes a lot of water. 

8. It lowers the value of surrounding land. 

Some who oppose solar farms on fertile farmland say they would be ok with it on brownfields, or industrial land that can’t be farmed. EDF Power Solutions says it does use brownfields and the tops of warehouses. 

Agravoltaics is the practice of allowing farm animals to graze between the solar panels or farmers planting crops. The American Solar Grazing Association estimates U.S. solar sites now host about 5,000 sheep. 

Efficacy of solar farms 

Cincinnati Energy Manager Rob McCracken says, “Over the last seven years of the aggregation program, residents have saved 13 percent relative to Duke’s rate. So right now, the solar PPA (purchase power agreement) is saving us a little bit on our aggregation rate, but we think certainly going forward as electricity rates continue to increase, because this is a fixed rate for the next 20 years, we’re going to see increasing benefits over time. 

Other examples 

Forbes reports, “Nine separate public housing authorities in Rhode Island are powered by solar farms in what may become a national model. The article explains that the energy generated by three solar installations is sold onto the grid. Then, a consortium of public housing authorities buys this power at a low fixed price set by a long-term contract and any excess power is sold to others at market rate through a net metering plan.”  

Philadelphia, like Cincinnati’s effort, built a solar farm to power a quarter of its city buildings. WHYY reports the 230,000 solar arrays near Gettysburg, “brings the city’s electricity use to 30 percent renewable, still short of the 100 percent target the city plans to meet in 2030.” 

Do solar farms decrease property values? 

Researchers at Virginia Tech wondered how solar farms affected the value of land and discovered no large scale studies had been done. 

The team scoured more than 8 million real estate sales to determine the answer is complicated. 

“As the U.S. scales up renewable energy, solar installations are increasingly being sited near homes and on farmland, and this often leads to pushback from residents worried about aesthetics or property value loss,” says Chenyang Hu, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics and the paper’s lead author. “Until now, much of this discussion has been based on anecdotal evidence.” 

They say more research is needed, but found: 

• On average, agricultural and vacant land within two miles of the site saw a 19.4 percent increase in value. 

• Residential homes within three miles of a site lost a small amount of value-4.8 percent on average. 

Looking ahead 

Increasingly, the decision to allow or block solar farms is falling to both lawmakers and the courts. Canary Media reports a new Ohio bill could be a de facto statewide ban on solar and wind because it seeks to redefine clean, reliable and affordable energy to prioritize natural gas and nuclear power. Senate Bill 294 co-sponsor George Lang represents Butler County. His staff told Brick by Brick the proposed bill requires companies to employ affordable, reliable and clean energy sources, prioritize domestic production and minimalize reliance on foreign made solar panels. Here is more analysis.  

Critics of the proposed bill say the clean includes fracked gas and nuclear power, reliable requires energy to always be available and affordable must have predictable cost. 

MAREC Action, a coalition of utility-scale solar, wind and energy storage developers, says Senate Bill 294 adds uncertainty to the industry and investors at a time when they want to build projects. Canary Media reports that many companies are under the gun to start construction by July 4, 2026 to lock in higher federal tax credits. 

Cincinnati is moving ahead with plans for another solar farm. Centre Hill is a former landfill in Winton Hills and the lower energy costs are expected to benefit low-income residents who live in the community. Negotiations also continue for a large-scale solar farm for the city. 

What do you think of solar farms for energy sustainability? Would you like to see changes to their current form? We want to build community around context and solutions in our cities. Your feedback is very important to the effort, as we continue to dig deeper into the responses to some of our most pressing social issues, including the housing crisis. Click on the green button below to take a short survey to help reinforce and refine our work. Thank you.