A Sunny Solar Future
We showed up. The People spoke. The Shawnee County Planning Commission listened. And they decided to delay voting on their proposed solar regulations until the February meeting to give them time to reflect and revise.
"This is how democracy works,” one of the Planning Commissioners said at Monday's public hearing as he pointed out that the point of asking for public comment is to take those comments into consideration.
Which is ideally true, but we know it doesn't always work that way. So we're thankful to have public officials who listened with open ears and were willing to go back and put in more work on an already time-consuming project.
It's important that we get these regulations right because they will largely dictate the future of solar power in Shawnee County. And that's a future that is getting closer every day.
As I've done more reading on solar power in the past few weeks, I've been surprised and encouraged to learn how rapidly it is becoming a major source of energy around the world. In some other countries—and indeed even in other states—solar energy accounts for the vast majority of the new energy generating capacity produced. The overall rate is about 50% right now in the U.S.
And the reason it's so popular? Solar energy is cheap! It is not expensive "alternative" energy, but the cheapest form of energy to produce. As Bill McKibben says in his book Here Comes the Sun (an informative and inspiring read recommended to us by a Full Circle customer), "We're used to thinking of solar power as the Whole Foods of energy—nice but pricey. But it's really the Costco of power now: cheap, available in bulk on the shelf. Ready to go."
The systems are affordable to install, they're easy to maintain, and once set up, they deliver very low-cost energy for years to come. Energy no longer needs to be tied to finite resources that we purchase month after month from a company that has extracted them from the ground. Solar (and wind) can completely shift the model and give everyone (except the fossil fuel industry) a sunnier, easier, breezier, more affordable future.
Right now, most of the solar development in the U.S. is happening in California and Texas, with some hotspots elsewhere in the country as well. There is a notable gap in the Plains states and much of the west. Not all land in Kansas is well-suited to solar, and there are not going to be huge areas in Shawnee County that could reasonably host a solar array. But there SOME potential areas. And we don't see any reason to shut down the possibility for development right out of that gate.
Since the Planning Commisison is taking another month to refine their regulations, it's not too late to add your voice to the conversation! You can do that by emailing them at ludev@snco.gov.
The pieces of the regulations that we would most like to see changed are:
(1) The 240 acre size limit. One thousand acres could be an acceptable minimum. Better would be to remove the cap entirely and evaluate projects on a case-by-case basis using the Conditional Use Permitting process.
(2) The requirement that solar projects be at least 2 miles apart. Let's remove this requirement so that neighboring properties can more easily host solar arrays. This is particularly important if the acreage limit remains low.
(3) Battery storage. The Commission expressed that they will be taking up the issue of battery storage as a separate matter. Encourage them to do this right away so that the regulations do not stand for long without allowing for battery storage—a necessary component of a Solar Energy Conversion System.
Let's help put a few more yellow dots on the map...or at least give solar power the opportunity to shine in Shawnee County.
-Justine
