The developer of a stalled solar farm is seeking a two-year extension of approval from Isle of Wight County.

County supervisors voted unanimously in 2023 to grant landowner Michael Doggett a conditional use permit that would allow the 3-megawatt solar farm, dubbed “Courthouse Hwy Solar 1 LLC,” to occupy up to 18 acres of his 148-acre farm along Courthouse Highway and Poorhouse Road. Because the project has yet to break ground, that approval will expire this year unless extended.

A Feb. 27 letter to county staff from the developer, Lowell, Massachusetts-based New Leaf Energy, requests that the county extend the permit through Nov. 16, 2027, to “allow more time for the project to be awarded capacity” in Dominion Energy’s expanded Shared Solar Program.

The Virginia General Assembly passed legislation in 2020 to create the shared solar program, which allows Dominion customers who pay rent or occupy buildings with shaded or poor roof conditions and can’t purchase their own rooftop solar panels to instead purchase a subscription for electricity from a shared solar facility that is owned and operated by a private entity, even if they’re not directly connected to the project. According to the Virginia Department of Energy’s website, shared solar customers pay for subscriptions that result in credits on their monthly electric bills based on the amount of solar energy a shared solar farm generates.

According to Dominion’s website, the 2020 legislation limited the first phase of the shared solar program to 200 megawatts of alternating current. In 2024, the General Assembly voted to expand the program by 150 megawatts, but the additional megawatts won’t be awarded until at least 90% of the initial 200 megawatts are subscribed and construction of those solar farms is substantially complete.

According to the letter, Courthouse Hwy Solar 1 LLC  “is the fifth project on the waiting list for the expanded program.” After completing an interconnection study, the project was placed on Dominion’s waiting list on Sept. 4.

New Leaf expects the waitlisted projects will be formally accepted into the Shared Solar program no earlier than mid-2026.

According to a public notice set to run in the Times’ June 4 print edition, the matter will be the subject of a public hearing at the June 24 meeting of Isle of Wight County’s Planning Commission. When vetting the original permit application in 2023, the Planning Commission voted 6-4 to endorse the project after deadlocking on an earlier motion by one of its members to recommend denial. Since that time, the Planning Commission has gained two new members.

Courthouse Hwy Solar 1 LLC is the smallest of 11 solar farms Isle of Wight County has approved since 2015, three of which have begun commercial operation.

Its location would be roughly half a mile from the county courthouse and government complex, and just over a mile north of the 20-megawatt, 170-acre Solidago solar farm the supervisors approved in 2018.

The supervisors previously voted, also in 2023, to adopt an ordinance capping the cumulative acreage of existing and proposed solar farms to 2% of the county’s prime farm soils, or a maximum of 2,446 acres. The county is on track to exceed the cap with last year’s approval of Arlington-based AES Clean Energy’s proposed Sycamore Cross solar farm, which would span more than 2,000 acres at Isle of Wight’s westernmost border with Surry County. County staff said in 2023 that all 18 acres of the Courthouse Hwy Solar site meet the definition of prime farmland, or the most ideal for growing crops, through Doggett’s application described the land as the “worst performing” on his farm and said the land has historically “only been used for hay.”