The developer of a proposed 2,200-acre solar farm that would span the Isle of Wight-Surry county border at its westernmost edge is appealing a June vote by Surry’s Planning Commission that found the project to be in conflict with the county’s comprehensive plan.

The Planning Commission, in a unanimous June 26 vote, found the project – roughly 125 acres of which would be located on Surry’s side of the county line – to be “not substantially in accord” with a 2023-adopted energy policy amendment to the county’s comprehensive plan, which specifies solar farms must be within one mile of existing high-voltage electric transmission lines.

Arlington-based AES Clean Energy, the parent company of Sycamore Cross Solar LLC, proposes to use existing high-voltage transmission lines located within the footprint of the 2021-approved, 1,750-acre Cavalier solar farm, another AES project that also straddles the Isle of Wight-Surry line. But the Planning Commission, in June, found a conflict due to the majority of the project being located in Isle of Wight, which would be more than one mile away from the transmission lines in Surry.

The Planning Commission further found “insufficient information” on “noise reduction, financial benefits and decommissioning.”

According to Horace Wade, Surry’s director of planning and community development, the county has changed its process for evaluating solar projects so that the Planning Commission now votes on the required “substantial accord determination” prior to vetting a project’s conditional use permit application. If the Planning Commission finds a project not in substantial accord with the comprehensive plan, a developer must appeal to the Board of Supervisors before the project can move forward with seeking a conditional use permit. AES’s appeal is scheduled for the supervisors’ Sept. 12 meeting.

A July 3 letter from AES director Ben Saunders to the supervisors, argues overruling the Planning Commission’s “erroneous” substantial accord determination “does not take away the Planning Commission’s authority or ability to recommend approval or denial of the conditional use permit.”

If the board does not overrule its Planning Commission, AES “will be denied the opportunity for a hearing on its request for a conditional use permit,” Saunders wrote. “As a matter of fundamental fairness, the Planning Commission’s flawed decision cannot deprive (AES) of its right to be heard.”

AES, he wrote, “believes the issues raised by the Planning Commission can be resolved, and we look forward to continuing to work with staff, the Planning Commission and the board, to address all concerns.”

Isle of Wight supervisors, for the second month in a row, postponed voting on their roughly 2,035-acre share of the project in August after hearing a mix of support and skepticism at a public hearing on the matter in July.

Both counties must approve their respective shares of the project for the concept to move forward as proposed.

Surry County has approved three solar farms since 2018 totaling 8,260 acres or 5.4% of the county’s developable land. The 2023 energy policy sets a 10%, or 15,278-acre cap on the cumulative acreage devoted to energy projects. To date, the three solar farms, 1,003-acre Dominion Energy nuclear plant and 22-acre Align RNG biogas processing plant account for roughly 9,280 acres or 60% of the specified maximum.

Isle of Wight has approved 10 solar farms since 2015, which account for 2,665 acres. In 2023, Isle of Wight an ordinance capping the cumulative amount of prime farmland devoted to solar at 2,446 acres or 2%, of which 2,237 are spoken for.