A Brief Summary of Other Findings in the County’s Report.

In December 2023, the Montgomery Planning Department made other observations and recommendations about solar energy and the impact of its 2021 zoning ordinance. Most notable: utility companies serving Maryland can more easily and conveniently find the renewable energy (solar, wind, etc.,) they need (under state law) from larger commercial scale projects in other jurisdictions and states. That, the report says, “dissuades the utilities from working with smaller projects locally.”

In addition, the report notes that the Ag Reserve is “at the edge of the service areas for all three [regional] electricity providers (PEPCO, BG&E, and Potomac Edison), exacerbating capacity shortcomings.” Another obstacle is ready connectivity infrastructure to the energy grid.

Overall, these energy infrastructure hurdles “represent the largest obstacle to implementing our collective solar goals, and zoning and land use regulation may likely have little if any ability to remedy these issues.”

The County’s Recommendations:

  • Improve coordination with utility companies to permit additional renewable energy connections to and the capacity of the electrical grid.

  • Consider increasing the size of solar projects on farmland beyond 2 megawatts. (The state has already increased the cap for the size of community and farm-based solar projects to 5 megawatts.)

  • Keep the prohibition on building farm-based solar arrays on prime agricultural land (class 1 and 2 soils).

  • Consider altering the approval and regulation of small-scale solar from “conditional use” status to “limited use” status. Conditional use is a more detailed regulatory process, requiring public hearings, etc. A limited use process would be easier and faster for applicants while “still upholding applicable zoning standards and preserving agriculture as the primary use on prime agricultural soils in the Agricultural Reserve,” the report said.

SCA disagrees with the need to revisit the restrictions the solar zoning measure imposes on the process for approval of solar projects on Ag Reserve land. Neither do we support lowering the zoning standard from “conditional use” to “limited use.”

A workable pathway remains for many more solar projects (up to 2 megawatts) under the existing rules. SCA’s priority remains protecting the primary activity in the Ag Reserve—agriculture.