Georgetown County
Council cuts fire impact fee in half for solar farm
Georgetown County has cut the fire impact fee for a solar farm under construction in the western part of the county by more than $1 million. But the $1 million that the developer, Silicon Ranch, will still pay is more than enough to cover the cost of specialized equipment that the county will need to buy, officials said.
Silicon Ranch is building two 100-megawatt solar farms on 2,064 acres in the Lambertown community. The $252 million project would normally require a fire impact fee of $2,016,045.30.
“While the current pricing structure may be appropriate for a typical commercial or apartment building, we believe that the fee, as currently assessed, does not reflect the reduced fire risk,” Reagan Farr, the CEO of Silicon Ranch, wrote in appealing the fee.
The company paid half the fee while the appeal was pending. The county’s rural fire district implemented the fee in 1997. It can be appealed to County Council.
Brandon Ellis, the county’s director of Emergency Services, looked at what the county needed to fight a fire at the solar farms, known as Lambert I and Lambert II.
“We had done some research when it was first proposed,” Ellis said. “We’re still actively learning and exploring.”
Silicon Ranch is seeking county zoning approval to add another phase to the Lambert facility with 50 megawatts of solar. That has been delayed by concerns from Council Member Raymond Newton that the first two phases are behind schedule.
A solar farm with 363 megawatts of capacity has also been proposed for 4,042 acres in Plantersville. That project is still awaiting review by the Planning Commission.
All the solar sites are former timber tracts, “a wild-land type of environment,” Ellis said. “It’s easy, but difficult, to access. It’s wide open space.”
The lack of water for firefighting in a remote area is the first concern. Second is getting equipment across the undeveloped site.
“The panels themselves don’t pose much of a hazard,” Ellis said. There will be 600,000 at the Lambert I and II sites. “Our greatest threat would be a wildfire scenario.”
That could be a fire that starts on the solar farm or one that threatens to spread to it from an adjacent tract.
Ellis said the county would need to add a tender to carry at least 2,500 gallons of water, a brush truck to go off-road, a smaller utility task vehicle to get around among the solar arrays and a trailer that can carry firefighting foam. He also added a drone with a thermal imaging device to help spot fires. He estimated the equipment would cost $850,000.
“We believe that there is quite a lot of specialized equipment the county needs to purchase to service this facility,” Administrator Angela Christian told County Council last month.
The council agreed to cut the impact fee by half without discussion.
The equipment bought with the Silicon Ranch impact fees will be used elsewhere in the county, Ellis said. The rural fire department already has a couple of tenders to get water to areas without hydrants.
The advantage of using foam is that it reduces the need for water, he added.
This was the first impact fee appeal Ellis has seen since joining the county in 2019. Other solar projects, should they appeal the fee, would have to be assessed on its merits, he said.
“The next one might be a different scenario,” Ellis said. “It’s uncharted territory for a lot of us.”
Central Electric Power Cooperative will buy 150 megawatts of power from the Lambert facility. The cooperative, which supplies electricity to rural cooperatives, learned last month that it is in the running to get up to $500 million in grants and low-interest loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for clean energy.
“We hope that the Lambert projects will be partially funded through this grant,” said Avery Wilks, spokesman for Central Electric.
Funding through the Empowering Rural America program will cover up to 25 percent of a project’s cost.
“It certainly does help when you’re talking about really expensive projects,” Wilks said. “It’s money that our members don’t have to pay.”
Lambert I and II were included in Central Electric’s grant application. Wilks said he didn’t have any information about Lambert III, the portion awaiting county approval.
