Grange Solar Public Comments and Responses
(Updated: October 29, 2024)
Grange Solar will periodically post bulk responses to comments and questions we receive on our social media channels. We will share these in one or more posts pinned to the top of our Facebook page and on our website. We will also be responding individually by Facebook messenger to many commenters to ensure that questions have been answered. As always, we invite members of the community to reach out to us directly via Facebook, email, or by making an appointment to meet in person.
Below are responses to comments and concerns that were received on Grange Solar’s Facebook page prior to October 29, 2024:
Comment/Concern: - Grange is hiding Facebook comments.
Grange Response: Over the past year, we have experienced a large number of aggressive and offensive comments on our Facebook page, including insults and threats to supporters and to our staff. As a result, we decided to hide all comments, consolidate the discernable and legitimate concerns, and respond to them periodically in combined posts or on our website.
Comment/Concern: - Sheep grazing is window dressing. Nobody eats lamb. It’s not real agriculture. And the sheep won’t be happy on a solar farm.
Grange Response: The U.S. has an unmet demand for lamb as an agricultural product that is currently being met by imports from New Zealand and elsewhere (264 million pounds of imports in 2021 alone). Meanwhile, lamb flocks in Ohio have declined for decades due primarily to a lack of land access by sheep farmers who need long-term access to invest in increasing flock sizes to meet that domestic demand. By devoting around 1% of Logan County’s cropland to sheep grazing, the county not only maintains that land in agricultural production but also diversifies the county’s agricultural output in a sector with expanding opportunity for domestic farmers while gaining unprecedented fiscal benefits - $5 million per year in local revenue over the life of the project - offered by the Grange Solar Grazing Center.
Rotational sheep grazing is now a common method that large-scale solar projects are implementing across the country to manage ground cover and vegetative maintenance. Solar projects plant perennial native ground cover to stabilize the soil between and beneath the panels, and sheep can walk among and below the panels, feeding off the ground cover and even enjoying the shade provided by the solar panels. This combination helps to improve soil health by storing nutrients in the soil that would otherwise be intensively used for row crops. Agrivoltaics are also beneficial to many types of pollinating insects as there will be less pesticides being used on the location, which, in addition to the established native perennial ground cover, means improved water quality due to slower soil erosion and improved nutrient filtration.
Comment/Concern: - Grange has leased approximately 6,000 acres but their permit application only uses 2,600 acres. Will Grange be adding more land to its permit application?
Grange Response: No, Grange does not have plans to add more acreage to its proposed 2,600 acre footprint in the permit application, which was recently submitted to the Ohio Power Siting Board (“OPSB”). Solar projects like Grange are very complicated to develop and oftentimes land that is leased by the project never makes it into the final layout for a variety of reasons, including unusable land resulting from setbacks, the distance by which certain leased acreage is from the main project area, etc. Grange’s 2,600-acre footprint represents the “maximum extent” of the project. While the layout may be tweaked, the maximum acreage is final and cannot be expanded without restarting the OPSB permitting process, which Grange does not plan on doing. Most, if not all, of the acreage that did not make it into the project’s final layout will thus be released by, or before, the end of the current lease term, and those landowners will keep the rent they have received up to that point in time.
Comment/Concern: - Why did Grange redact the archeological study in their OPSB application? And why was the 10-mile radius of study reduced to 5 miles?
Grange Response: The State of Ohio prefers that such studies, regardless of the proposed land use, redact locations of potential archaeological sites before they are made public in order to avoid the possibility of looting of any artifacts found as part of the investigation. The Ohio Historic Preservation Office and OPSB do receive the unredacted version of the studies. The 10-mile radius requirement has roots in permitting of taller structures (e.g., wind turbines) which can be seen from miles away. Solar projects like Grange, which are lower in height than a single-story building, are typically not visible outside of a few hundred feet, let alone 5 miles. Reducing the historical study radius to 5 miles is thus routine in Ohio.
Comment/Concern: - Grange will harm the Indian Lake tourist industry.
Grange Response: Grange’s solar panels will not be visible from any location on Indian Lake, and there is no evidence that tourists will be impacted by the presence of solar panels in nearby fields or that they would be unwilling to drive past them on their drive to and from Indian Lake. Grange’s solar panels, which are limited to 15 feet in height, will be setback at least 150 feet from all public roads and screened by existing vegetation/trees and planted landscaping, which will enhance the view anyone would have while driving past a project area. To the contrary, the substantial investment in public services will likely make the area a more attractive destination for tourists. The $5 million per year in direct local revenue, in addition to employment revenue and landowner payments, will stimulate the local economy, which in turn supports the growth of local businesses such as retail, hotels, and restaurants. Additionally, Grange has committed millions of dollars in donations to local programs and organizations, including a $1.4 million pledge to create the Indian Lake Great Miami River Maintenance Program, which will help clean and maintain a 3.35-mile stretch of the Great Miami River to improve water quality and enable new recreation and tourism.
Comment/Concern: - Locals haven’t had the opportunity to ask questions and have them answered by the company.
Grange Response: In addition to a well-advertised open-door policy, weekly office hours, and numerous open houses and public events over the course of 2023 and 2024 where the local community was invited to bring their questions and concerns, Grange held a series of four listening tour meetings and a 5th open mic town hall-style meeting in which a total of 118 local residents and leaders participated. Three of the four listening tour meetings concluded with Q&A sessions. Feedback and concerns heard at these meetings, as well as the two OPSB-required public information meetings, have been integrated into the project design, commitments, and application. It should be noted that leaders of the local opposition group actively and publicly encouraged their members to boycott the Grange listening tours and town hall meetings and organized protests and pickets to public outreach events organized by Grange.
Find out more and read the Listening Tour Report here: https://www.grange.solar/listening-tour-report
Comment/Concern: - Topsoil will be removed from site, and the land won’t be farmable after the panels are removed.
Grange Response: Grange’s application to the OPSB commits not to remove any topsoil from its project area, limit grading activities and ensure that the soil composition after decommissioning is comparable to its pre-construction condition through soil testing. These commitments will be codified in the conditions that the project will be held to as certified by the OPSB, and were a result of extensive feedback received from the Department of Agriculture and other soil scientists/experts to whom Grange consulted. As an anecdote, on some recently constructed solar projects in Ohio, areas that were used temporarily during construction and where topsoil was stockpiled and reapplied after construction (such as for parking and equipment laydown areas) are already back in crop production.
Comment/Concern: - Grange will take up so much farmland that it will impact the farming way of life and impact farmers’ ability to purchase equipment.
Grange Response: Grange will occupy roughly 1% of the farmland in Logan County. In addition to creating hundreds of good construction jobs, Grange will create almost as many vegetation management and landscaping jobs during its decades of operations as the farm fields currently provide farming jobs. Additionally, operation of the dual solar-and-sheep-grazing facility on Grange will result in net job creation during operations.
Comment/Concern: - Food is more important than electricity and solar takes food out of many mouths. Corn and soybeans are a better use of land than solar. Solar should go on buildings and parking lots, not farmland.
Grange Response: While farming food is incredibly important to feed our country, the concern that we are running out of land to feed our country is unfounded given that roughly 50% of the corn grown in the U.S. is either used for ethanol production or exported to other countries, including China, and roughly 75% of the country’s soybean crop is either exported or used for alternative fuel production. Furthermore, the use of Ohio farmland to produce ethanol requires approximately 100 acres to generate the same amount of energy as a single acre in solar panels. Grange would use roughly 1% of the farmland in Logan County to power the equivalent of 60,000 Ohio homes and businesses with electricity that is less than half the price of solar power from a residential rooftop or parking lot. The acreage utilized by Grange is equivalent to roughly 10% of the acreage currently used to generate energy via corn ethanol in Logan County. Find out more about solar vs. ethanol energy efficiency here: https://www.cleanwisconsin.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Corn-Ethanol-Vs.-Solar-Analysis-V3-9-compressed.pdf and in the Grange application’s Socioeconomic Report here (pgs 17-20)
Comment/Concern: - Solar is dependent on government subsidies and money from China. Once the money dries up, the solar panels will be left in place for landowners to clean up.
Grange Response: Many industries receive local, state, and federal policy support, including agriculture, manufacturing, automobiles, and all types of power generation (including coal, gas, hydroelectric and nuclear power). Solar projects receive a 30% federal tax credit upfront, which they use to help finance construction. In contrast, fossil fuels have received trillions of dollars of direct subsidies over many decades, including taxpayer-funded bailouts in Ohio, annual production and exploration subsidies, valuation discounts, and various other tax breaks. Assuming a $500 million construction cost, Grange’s one-time federal tax credit payment is estimated to be roughly $150 million. Logan County’s share of that Federal tax burden equates to less than $30,000 in total, an investment for which the county will receive $5 million per year in local revenue for the life of the project.
A key benefit of solar power is that the fuel is free, which means that once constructed, there are very few costs required to operate a solar facility compared to coal, gas, hydroelectric, and nuclear power plants. Another key benefit of solar power is that it avoids fossil energy’s huge societal cost, which affects all of our pocketbooks. These range from increased health care costs to environmental damage, and constitute massive indirect subsidies for coal and gas.
Find out more here: https://www.grange.solar/reliability
Decommissioning obligations and guarantees are addressed below.
Comment/Concern: - Grange will leave a mess for the landowner to clean up and will not be farmable at the end of the project life.
Grange Response: Ohio law requires that Grange post a decommissioning bond that covers an estimate made by a “professional engineer registered with the state board of registration for professional engineers and surveyors” to “ensure that funds are available for the decommissioning of the facility.” The estimate must cover “the full costs of decommissioning the utility facility, including the proper disposal of all facility components and restoration of the land on which the facility is located to its pre-construction state.” To keep it current, the bond amount must be recalculated every five years that the facility is in operation.
Find out more here: https://www.grange.solar/decom
Comment/Concern: - Solar panels can’t be recycled and will create tons of waste.
Grange Response: Solar panels are made almost entirely of tempered, shatter-resistant glass, metal, plastics and a semiconducting material that is thinner than a sheet of paper and fully encapsulated to keep out air and moisture. They contain no liquids that can spill. According to the Ohio Department of Health, there is no public health impact from solar panels used in solar facilities: solar panel design "ensures that the cells and solder are completely encapsulated and protected from rain and other elements that might corrode or damage them, and also means that the general public would not come into contact with any potentially toxic elements contained in the panel unless...purposefully ground into a fine dust.“
Solar panels are so safe that they are installed nationwide on millions of homes, schools, hospitals, barns, farms, churches, and businesses.
There are even floating solar projects that are installed on drinking water reservoirs, like this one in Delaware, Ohio!
Find out more here: https://www.grange.solar/safety
Comment/Concern: - Solar projects cause extreme heat issues and can raise ground temperatures by 10+ degrees.
Grange Response: According to an NC State University review of a number of studies on this topic, while the air immediately above a solar panel on a sunny day is warmer than the air next to the solar panel, the increase in temperature is localized to the solar equipment and is not measurable outside of the project fence line. In contrast, the phenomenon known as “corn sweat”, whereby corn and soybean crops cause the regional humidity to spike, is physically observable around corn and soy fields. Per Fox Weather, “...corn sweat can make heat go from uncomfortable to unbearable across the "corn belt" states…”
Comment/Concern: - Solar projects will leak toxic chemicals into the ground, leach chemicals into the water table, pollute the water, and poison the soil.
Grange Response: Solar panels have no liquids to spill, and are made almost entirely of glass, aluminum, and plastic. A research report by N.C. State University makes clear that solar panels are safe. According to the Ohio Department of Health, there is no public health impact from solar panels used in solar facilities: solar panel design "ensures that the cells and solder are completely encapsulated and protected from rain and other elements that might corrode or damage them, and also means that the general public would not come into contact with any potentially toxic elements contained in the panel unless...purposefully ground into a fine dust.“ Find out more here: https://odh.ohio.gov/know-our-programs/health-assessment-section/media/summary-solarfarms; and here: https://www.grange.solar/safety
Comment/Concern: - Solar will kill animals, destroy wildlife habitat, disrupt bird and animal migration and feeding patterns, harm livestock, and grow weeds. Planting indigenous pollinators everywhere should be the goal.
Grange Response: Grange is designed to have a positive environmental impact both locally and beyond. Grange is not clearing any forested areas and is almost exclusively using active farmland which will be converted from an active row crop use to a passive native grassland use underneath the solar panels for decades. The project’s solar fields are discontinuous, which will allow large wildlife (ex. deer) to migrate between the fields, and fencing will allow smaller wildlife to migrate through the fields. The passive grassland use means a large reduction in chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides being applied in the project area compared to the current intensive row crop use - a significant local environmental benefit to wildlife and humans alike. Grange will plant many acres of new pollinator habitat around the project perimeter and will use sheep grazing as the primary means of vegetation management below and between the solar panels.
Solar projects reduce reliance on energy sources that are far more harmful to birds, in particular. According to the non-profit National Audubon Society, whose mission is to protect birds, cutting air pollution “is essential to avoid the worst impacts on birds and other wildlife” and “large-scale solar farms can benefit birds overall.”
Comment/Concern: - Solar farms are unnecessary for Ohio energy needs.
Grange Response: The State of Ohio is 4th in the nation in electricity consumption but 10th in the nation in electricity production. That means that, as a net electricity importer, Ohio’s homes and businesses send money out of state to pay for their electricity consumption. Ohio imports over 20% of its power from other states and Canada via the regional grid. That means that increasing electricity production in-state, especially during peak demand hours, offsets electricity that is being imported from outside of Ohio, boosting the state's energy independence and keeping more of Ohio’s dollars in-state. Ohio is one of 14 states in the multi-state transmission grid operator (PJM), and that grid is forecasted to be short on new generation through at least 2030. Proposed natural gas facilities represent only 2.3% of the projects in the PJM queue that are able to come online through the end of this decade, and 0% of the queue are proposed coal plants, meaning that without new solar projects like Grange providing new peak power, Ohio will face substantial challenges in cost-effectively meeting the state’s growing demand for power.
Meanwhile, new large employers like manufacturers and data centers are at risk of looking elsewhere to locate their facilities as Ohio faces increasing power demand and constrained power supply. As Ohio’s Representative Bill Seitz of the House Public Utility Committee has warned, “This is an urgent matter…we are rapidly running out of electricity." Find out more here: https://insidelines.pjm.com/new-interconnection-process-reaches-next-milestone/
Comment/Concern: - Solar is inefficient vs. coal/gas and efficiency decreases over time.
Grange Response: Commercial solar panels range between 18% and 23% efficiency, which is a measure of the amount of sunlight that hits a solar panel that is converted to electricity. The more efficient the solar panel, the less space required to produce power. The net capacity factor (NCF) refers to the % of a generator’s rated capacity that actually produces power over a year. Solar farms in Ohio have an NCF of about 20%. Gas peakers, which generally operate only during peak hours of the day when demand is highest, typically have NCFs of 10-15% or less. Solar projects in Ohio use between 5 and 7 acres per MW of capacity, which can produce enough electricity to power about 120 Ohio homes. Each 1 acre of land in solar produces approximately the same amount of energy as 100 acres of land used to grow corn for ethanol.
Find out more here: https://www.grange.solar/reliability
Comment/Concern: - Solar is unreliable. Texas had power outages in the summer and people died because of solar.
Grange Response: Renewable energy is often criticized as “variable,” but its variability is highly predictable. Fossil fuel resources, in contrast, often have unexpected production outages, which pose a greater risk to the grid. Grid operators know when the sun will set—but they do not know when a critical component might break at a gas or coal power plant, or when severe weather or a global crisis will suddenly reduce fossil fuel supplies. For example, according to the Texas grid operator, the biggest contributor to Texas’s blackouts in 2021 was the combination of natural gas power plant failures and frozen natural gas fuel supply systems (at the gas wells and pipelines.)
Find out more here: https://www.grange.solar/reliability
Comment/Concern: - Solar Doesn’t Work In Ohio - There is not enough sunlight, they don’t work on cloudy days, and hail storms will take them out.
Grange Response: Since the cost of solar continues to steeply decline over time, sunshine is free, and operating and maintenance costs are relatively low, the solar resource in Ohio, which averages 4.65 kWh/m2 per day, is more than enough to produce low-cost peak power for Ohio’s grid. In comparison, Germany, which gets over 12% of its power from solar, has an average solar resource that is not as strong as Ohio (i.e. less than 4 kWh/m2 per day.)
Find out more here: https://www.grange.solar/reliability
Comment/Concern: - Solar projects are too costly to build and maintain.
Grange Response: According to financial advisory firm Lazard’s “Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis” in 2023, solar power costs have declined more than 80% over the last decade, and solar facilities can now produce power cheaper than coal, nuclear, and gas peaker plants and are competitive with many baseload natural gas plants. Every day, Ohio’s grid operator forecasts power demand for the next day and schedules generators to meet that demand. Certain power generators (such as fast-starting gas, oil-fired generators, and hydroelectric plants) that meet electricity demand at peak usage times of the day tend to provide the most expensive power. The grid operator accepts offers from the lowest-to-highest-priced generator until the forecasted electricity demand for each hour of every day is met. As more solar power is added to the grid, its $0 fuel cost means that it is almost always scheduled for the daylight hours. Solar produces power during some of the most expensive hours of the year (for example, a hot July afternoon), which means that the grid operator can avoid scheduling expensive gas or oil power during those hours and save consumers money. This is why, for example, renewable energy saved Texans consumers nearly $1 billion per month in 2022 and a total of $28 billion over the last 12 years! Find out more about how solar costs compare to other power sources here: https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
Comment/Concern: - Solar is ugly and creates glare into people's homes and cars with lots of mirrors, access roads, and concrete.
Grange Response: Grange will not use any mirrors. Solar projects consist of rows of solar panels that are low in profile and uniform in height, making them easy to screen from sight. They are designed to absorb light…roughly 98% of the light that hits a solar panel is absorbed. A well-designed solar project like Grange with appropriate buffer landscaping and equipment setbacks will have a minimal viewshed impact on neighboring properties, especially once the planted buffer has reached maturity. Finally, other more common land uses (residential developments, factories, poultry houses, etc.) have a much greater visual impact compared to low-lying solar arrays placed in fields.
Comment/Concern: - Solar involves slave labor in China.
Grange Response: Although a majority of solar panels used in the U.S. today are imported, the vast majority of those panels do not come from China. Many solar panels installed in Ohio are manufactured by the U.S. company First Solar, which has a large manufacturing plant in Perrysburg, Ohio (https://www.firstsolar.com/). Like everything from tractors and trucks to cell phones and TVs, solar panels are made in highly competitive, global markets.
Comment/Concern: - Grange is bribing people to keep quiet with their Good Neighbor Agreements.
Grange Response: Ohio law encourages Good Neighbor Agreements (GNAs). The content of a GNA is left to the parties who sign it. A copy of Grange’s GNA, which is the same for every neighbor, is on its website. Grange’s GNA is for supporters or those who are neutral about the project and whose questions and concerns have been addressed. Not only does the GNA not prohibit participants from complaining about any problems that may arise during construction, it explicitly encourages participation in the OPSB process and allows participants to raise questions, concerns, and complaints during construction, operations, and decommissioning of the project.
Comment/Concern: - Someone will put a lien on your property if Grange doesn’t pay.
Grange Response: Grange’s leases do not allow anyone to put a lien on a landowner’s underlying property. Under Ohio law, liens may be placed on Grange’s equipment as part of project financing and construction agreements, but liens would not be placed on the underlying land.
Comment/Concern: - Grange will reduce people’s property values.
Grange Response: Some developments, like landfills that bring truck traffic and litter or large poultry operations with odors, may affect property values. Solar facilities do not reduce neighboring property values because they generate no odor, air pollution, or water pollution, and virtually no waste, noise, light, or dust. Many studies using different methodologies have concluded that neighboring property values near solar facilities are not affected, particularly at solar facilities like Grange designed with robust equipment setbacks and perimeter landscaping. Some studies, including a recent large study focused on the Midwest, have even found that having a large solar project in a rural community can increase property values, likely because the infusion of local revenue improves schools and local amenities without the need for costly infrastructure and can even result in lower tax rates over time vs. comparable communities without big solar revenues. Find out more here: https://www.grange.solar/property
Comment/Concern: - Solar panels catch on fire.
Grange Response: Solar fire risk is minimal and does not threaten neighbors. Solar panels are made mostly of glass and aluminum and are not flammable. According to North Carolina State University, “[c]oncern over solar fire hazards should be limited because only a small portion of materials in the panels are flammable, and those components cannot self-support a significant fire.” Most of the news items referenced online related to fire and solar are from rooftop solar fires, where roofs or other building material can support a fire near or under a solar panel, or battery-related fires, which have their own fire-risk profile unrelated to any adjacent ground-mounted solar facility like Grange. For example, an often-referenced 2023 fire at a solar facility in Jefferson County, New York was actually a battery fire, a nuance that was missing in a number of media headlines about the event.
Comment/Concern: - Solar will increase the cost of electricity. It would be great if it lowered power bills.
Grange Response: Solar produces power at peak demand hours, which means that the grid can avoid the need to use much more expensive peaking resources during those hours, which saves utilities (and consumers) a lot of money. For instance, estimates in Texas show that solar and wind saved Texas consumers ~$1 billion per month in 2022! Meanwhile, Ohio and the regional grid PJM grid is facing power supply shortages that are pushing up power prices for consumers and businesses. Permitting more solar projects like Grange would inject much-needed power in Ohio where it’s needed most and help combat the current trend of power price increases.
Comment/Concern: - The power doesn’t even stay local or help Logan County.
Grange Response: The power generated by Grange Solar is injected onto the local transmission system and flows first to the closest substations and users before flowing out to the next closest substations and users until it’s fully absorbed. Since Logan County imports close to 100% of its electricity, much of the power generated by Grange Solar is expected to be used locally.
But like exporting corn or transmissions, being a power exporter is not a bad thing, because it means that ratepayers in other places are sending their money to Logan County for the betterment of the local community, while that money is currently leaving Logan County to benefit other localities that have power generation. Grange Solar would become the largest taxpayer in Logan County and increase local revenue for schools and services by $5 million per year, which would be a massive boon for the local community.
Additionally, neighbors within 1,500 feet (5+ football fields) of the project qualify for the Grange Good Neighbor Program which can help fund either a rooftop solar system on their property or annual payments to help offset their electricity bill for up to 40 years (in addition to $5,000 for landscaping on the owner’s property).
Comment/Concern: - PILOT program will actually increase local property owners’ tax bills.
Grange Response: The owners of Grange Solar’s ~2,600 acres currently pay less than $60,000 in taxes in total to the county, so in theory taking this land out of the tax rolls for a PILOT would increase total county-wide taxes by ~$60,000 per year. While Grange would generate many times that amount in local revenue - up to $5 million per year - Grange will work with the Logan County Auditor to ensure that even the $60,000 per year tax difference referenced above is covered by a payment from the project does not negatively impact any taxpayer in the county.
Comment/Concern: - We can’t trust the promises and commitments made by Open Road Renewables because they will just sell the project and move on.
Grange Response: Just like any permit obligation, the commitments made by Open Road or Grange Solar are conditions of operating the project, and neither Open Road or any subsequent owner of the Grange Solar project has the ability to operate the project without complying with each and every permitting condition.
The OPSB is the state agency that ensures regulatory compliance with all permit conditions. To use an analogy, if a homeowner applied for and received a permit to build a second home in their backyard with conditions that limited the height to 35 feet and required a 50-foot setback from the property line, selling the property to a new owner would not allow them to ignore the height and setback conditions on the permit, and any violation of the permit conditions could be reported to the permitting authority.
A number of project commitments are not only enforceable by OPSB, but are also enshrined in the project leases, in state law, or both. For example, both the project leases and state law require a decommissioning bond be placed to guarantee decommissioning of the project and restoration of the site at the end of the project’s life. In short, the permit conditions, including all project commitments included in the OPSB permit, apply to the project regardless of who owns it.
You can review the entire Grange Solar OPSB application in a convenient format organized by section here: https://www.grange.solar/application