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FirstEnergy’s utility customers took heavy hits from severe thunderstorms and tornadoes last month. Nearly half a million of its Ohio utility customers lost power, with extended outages causing many to lose food and incur other expenses in addition to property damage due to the extreme weather. 

All of the company’s utility customers can also expect hits from higher energy bills next year after FirstEnergy’s pending rate case ends. On July 31, the company asked Ohio regulators to let it double the increased charges sought — from roughly $94 million per year to $190.3 million annually.

Yet state regulators still have not resolved multiple FirstEnergy cases involving millions of dollars and issues related to House Bill 6, the 2019 nuclear and coal bailout law at the heart of Ohio’s ongoing corruption scandal. And none of those cases will be decided before voters cast their ballots this fall.

Other recent developments include: 

• The State of Ohio settled potential criminal charges against FirstEnergy for $20 million, without stating how the figure was arrived at or making any provision for restitution to Ohio ratepayers.
• Federal prosecutors urged the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder’s criminal conviction and 20-year sentence.
• Ohio regulators approved more than $100 million in challenged expenses for two 1950s-era coal plants for which subsidies are mandated by HB 6.

In the dark

Grid reliability is back in the spotlight after tornadoes and severe thunderstorms knocked out power to approximately 495,000 of FirstEnergy’s Ohio utility customers on August 6.

FirstEnergy Ohio President Torrence Hinton and other company executives provided a briefing on the company’s response to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio after its September 4 meeting. “We haven’t had this amount of customers out for about 30 years,” Hinton said.

Restoring power took roughly a week, with outages lasting more than three days for more than 100,000 of those customers, data from the company show. 

The outages likely won’t count against the utilities’ reliability requirements for this year because of the extreme nature of the storms. 

Some Ohio lawmakers like House Rep. Dick Stein, R-Norwalk, have already expressed concern about reliability, although they have framed it as a consequence of retiring coal-fired power plants and have called for more electricity from fossil fuels or nuclear energy. 

However, the vast majority of electric grid reliability problems stem from bad weather and distribution issues. Those problems are likely to worsen as infrastructure ages and fossil fuel-driven climate change makes extreme weather more common.

“Without immediate and meaningful action, climate change will continue to cause extreme weather and drive up costs for all Ohioans,” 14 Democratic Ohio House representatives wrote in an August 14 letter, calling for regulators to address the effectiveness and reliability of the state’s current energy strategies, which are heavily depending on fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Read more:

Despite millions spent on service upgrades, Ohio utilities still miss reliability marks (Energy News Network)

About 1,000 power outages linger 7 days after storms (FOX 8 News)

Doubling increased charges

FirstEnergy asked the PUCO this summer to let it double its proposed increase for rates and riders for its three Ohio utilities to $190.3 million per year, compared with the $94 million sought just two months earlier.

The requested increase is “primarily due to lower current revenues, higher operating expenses and higher rate base balances” than estimated, said Santino Fanelli, FirstEnergy’s director for Ohio rates and regulatory affairs, in testimony filed with the PUCO on July 31.

Fanelli also said the requested increase reflects the use of actual cost and revenue data instead of estimates for the first five months of the rate case’s test year. A pending bill would give utilities more leeway in using estimates, and some advocates worry companies might pad them on the high side.

In late June the PUCO selected Blue Ridge Consulting Services to help it review financial data, management policies and other information. The commission’s staff will then likely prepare a report with recommendations. Ratepayers will also have a chance to comment at local public hearings, which have not yet been scheduled but will likely include a virtual session.

Read more:

FirstEnergy companies asking Ohio regulators for rate increases (WUXU)

Ohio ratemaking reform bill would give more favors to utilities, critics say (Energy News Network)

Slap on the wrist?

FirstEnergy agreed to pay $20 million to settle its state criminal liability related to HB 6, but it’s unclear how lawyers for the utility, the Ohio Attorney General’s office and the Summit County prosecutor’s office arrived at the number. 

The amount is just under one-third of the bribes the company admitted to paying when it settled federal criminal charges against it in July 2021. The law’s nuclear bailouts would have been $1.3 billion if they hadn’t been stayed and then repealed.

The agreement with the state acknowledges the company’s cooperation but does not require any compensation to ratepayers, said Ashley Brown, a former PUCO commissioner.

Spokesperson Steve Irwin at the Ohio Attorney General’s office framed the settlement as “an important step in bringing the disgraced corporate leaders who used their positions of power to betray FirstEnergy’s ratepayers and employees and the people of Ohio to account for their crimes.” Irwin noted that the company is required to provide evidence, access to witnesses and testimony in the pending cases against former FirstEnergy executives Chuck Jones and Michael Dowling and in a civil proceeding relating to HB 6. “FirstEnergy today is not the company it was five years ago,” he added, noting steps taken to reform the company’s internal ethics program.

FirstEnergy President and CEO Brian Tierney echoed the theme in a press release, saying the company is “a stronger organization today.” 

Others are more critical.

“It is really disappointing to see the Ohio Attorney General’s office let FirstEnergy off the hook for its crimes with what amounted to more of a wink-wink than a slap on the wrist,” said Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute. He contrasted the August settlement with the potential remedies spelled out in the Ohio Attorney General’s initial civil complaint in a 2020 case, where potential punishments included corporate dissolution of FirstEnergy and penalties of triple the damages caused by allegedly wrongful actions.

Read more:

FirstEnergy to pay $20M, avoid criminal charges in state pay-to-play investigation (Akron Beacon Journal)

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost settles with FirstEnergy for $20 million (Ohio Capital Journal)

Regulatory cases continue

Ohio voters can’t expect a resolution to any of FirstEnergy’s four HB 6-related regulatory cases before casting their votes this fall. Nineteen candidates on the ballot for Ohio’s General Assembly are among those who voted for HB 6 in 2019.

An audit in one case isn’t due before the end of September, and no date for an evidentiary hearing has been set. Two other cases about how FirstEnergy spent money from two bill riders won’t get an evidentiary hearing until next February.

A fourth regulatory case about corporate separation is set to start its hearing on October 9, when early voting will be underway. That date may move, however, because several depositions won’t take place until November and December. Depositions are sessions where witnesses answer lawyers’ questions under oath before a hearing or trial.

Questions in some of those depositions will likely follow up on information from recently produced documents. Possible topics also include why FirstEnergy fired various individuals besides former executives Jones and Dowling in the wake of Householder and others’ arrests in 2020.

Read more: 

FirstEnergy exec was fired amid bribery probe after his daughter pitched a $44k/month contract, records show (Cleveland.com)

FirstEnergy’s chief ethics officer knew about $4.3 million payment the company said was a bribe (Cleveland.com)

Rubber stamping?

Ohio regulators have approved more than $100 million in challenged 2020 expenses for two 1950s-era coal plants. HB 6 lets the plants’ Ohio utility owners pass costs on to ratepayers through 2030. By then the total subsidies could be around $1 billion, according to RunnerStone, a consultant for the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association.

“Consumers once again got stuck with the bill,” said Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Maureen Willis when the August 21 ruling came out.

The PUCO found that while the auditor, London Economics International, made several recommendations and conclusions critical of the coal plants’ practices and spending, the firm hadn’t come straight out and said any amount should be disallowed.

Paul Arbaje, an energy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the ruling “sets a disturbing precedent. Coal-fired electricity is not only terribly destructive to our climate and public health, but it’s also completely uneconomical and has been for a long time.”

Higher capacity prices in the PJM grid region will take effect next June and could offset some of next year’s coal subsidies under HB 6. However, critics say the old plants will still be a bad deal for Ohioans. And higher capacity prices will affect wholesale electricity prices across the regional grid footprint, likely raising energy expenses overall.

Read more:

Ohio coal plant subsidies still a bad deal for ratepayers despite growing generation demand, experts say (Energy News Network)

HB 6 coal plant charges mount up again in Ohio (Energy News Network)

Coal company got big payback from HB 6 (Energy News Network)

Federal court filings

Briefing has been completed in lobbyist Matt Borges’ appeal from his federal criminal conviction alongside former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder last year. The court has not yet scheduled oral argument.

Federal prosecutors filed their brief in the Householder case on August 26, arguing that the trial court got both Householder’s conviction and his 20-year sentence right. Three groups also filed a friend-of-the-court brief on August 30, countering Householder’s argument that bribes were campaign donations and a form of speech protected under the Constitution.

“The First Amendment provides no protection for the corrupt and knowing exchange of campaign contributions for official acts,” wrote lawyers for the Campaign Legal Center, the Environmental Law & Policy Center and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

A July court filing in FirstEnergy’s deferred prosecution agreement case acknowledged the company has performed its obligations under that 2021 settlement, which resulted in a $230 million penalty. FirstEnergy must continue to cooperate in any other criminal cases the federal government brings relating to facts stated in that HB 6 case. However, the federal government has yet to bring criminal charges against any current or former FirstEnergy executives who allegedly made the bribes.

A separate case at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals involves FirstEnergy’s challenge to Judge Algenon Marbley’s May 6 ruling that the company must produce its internal investigation to lawyers in shareholder litigation. The appeals court docket includes friend-of-the-court briefs filed by several law firms and a malpractice insurance carrier, expressing concern about whether the ruling could erode attorney-client privilege.

Read more:

On appeal, DOJ affirms ex-Ohio House Speaker Householder took FirstEnergy’s $60 million ‘secret deal’ (Cleveland.com)

Scandal-tainted FirstEnergy demands appeal of ‘shockwave’ privilege ruling (Reuters)

FirstEnergy backed by dozens of law firms in ‘shockwave’ privilege appeal (Reuters)

HB 6 Updates: More bill charges on the way while cases continue is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The leader of a local anti-solar energy group admitted to Ohio regulators last week that a well-connected natural gas executive is among the group’s largest donors.

The testimony by Jared Yost, founder of Knox Smart Development, offered the fullest view yet of the group’s ties to fossil fuel interests, undercutting its claims to be a “grassroots” advocate for local farmers and other residents.

“It changes the story quite a bit,” said David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group that recently published a report on the fossil fuel industry’s long history of using money and misinformation to stoke local opposition to renewable energy projects.

Knox Smart Development emerged late last year as a high-profile local opponent of the proposed 120 megawatt Frasier Solar project, located near Mount Vernon, Ohio. Questions emerged about its funding source after it hosted a town hall meeting at a local theater with complimentary food and drinks for approximately 500 attendees.

Yost disclosed during an Ohio Power Siting Board hearing last week that one of its largest donors is Tom Rastin, the former vice president of Ariel Corporation, which makes compressors for the oil and gas industry. The Washington Post reported last year that Rastin is also a leader of The Empowerment Alliance, a dark money nonprofit that advocates for the natural gas industry.

Yost said he did not have knowledge about Rastin’s work with The Empowerment Alliance, but said the fossil fuel group provided “non-financial” resources to Knox Smart Development to help oppose the Frasier Solar project.

Yost denied being swayed by corporate interests and said his group has not received corporate funding. “The Empowerment Alliance has nothing to do with me or [Knox Smart Development],” he told the Energy News Network via email. “I have reached out to them and asked questions on a couple of occasions, as can anyone, and as I have done of others.”

Multiple links

When asked in his hearing testimony if Knox Smart Development was “funded by any individuals or entities having any interest or providing any goods or services to the fossil fuel industry,” Yost answered, “No, not directly to the best of my knowledge.”

On cross-examination, however, Yost admitted Rastin was one of the group’s largest funders. Yost is a former IT specialist at Ariel Corporation, and his work supported Rastin’s department. Rastin’s wife, Karen Buchwald Wright, is a former president and CEO of Ariel and continues as board chair. Her son Alex Wright succeeded her in 2021 as CEO.

A July 2024 report from the Energy and Policy Institute includes links to recently produced public records. A September 2023 email shows Rastin was slated to speak to the Ohio General Assembly’s Business First caucus in October. The email attached a copy of Rastin’s biography with The Empowerment Alliance logo on top.

Mitch Given, who was identified in a meeting with Ohio lawmakers last year as The Empowerment Alliance’s Ohio director, spoke at a Knox Smart Development town hall meeting last November. There he was introduced as someone who travels across the state to help farmers and others “find their voice” and push back against solar projects.

The emcee for that town hall event, Tom Whatman, is a chief strategist for Majority Strategies. The Empowerment Alliance’s Form 990 filing for 2023 shows it paid the political consulting firm more than $620,000 that year, making it the group’s highest paid contractor for five years in a row.

Yost last week also discussed a dinner meeting last summer about the Frasier Solar project where the attendees included Rastin, Given, Whatman, Ariel employee Trina Trainor, and Lanny Spaulding. Spaulding is listed as a contact person for The Empowerment Alliance on an Ohio lobbyist registration form. Yost’s dad and others also attended. Yost had earlier said he did not organize the meeting.

Yost denied being influenced by The Empowerment Alliance or other corporate interests.

“No one has ever tried to direct me in any way with my opposition to this project. I am nobody’s ‘puppet’,” Yost told the Energy News Network. “I am doing this for me, my family, my township, and my neighbors.” He also said it was “insulting that people try to question my intentions, integrity, and intelligence. Frankly, it hurts.”

Misinformation at work

Nolan Rutschilling, managing director of energy policy for the Ohio Environmental Council, said arguments presented by behind-the-scenes special interests can be more believable if they seem to come from a grassroots effort. 

“People trust their neighbors because they are often believed to not have any outside agenda other than the best interest of their community,” Rutschilling said. “Unfortunately, this allows misinformation to spread quickly, and communities have stopped renewable energy projects from moving forward.”

The stakes are significant, he said, because local public sentiment is among the factors the Ohio Power Siting Board considers in judging whether a project is in the public interest, along with statewide interests.

“If the fossil fuel industry wants to oppose solar projects, they should intervene in the open — not by amplifying misinformation in communities,” Rutschilling said.

“The Empowerment Alliance prefers to stoke fear in hopes of snuffing out perceived competition from clean, cheap, local renewable energy,” said Craig Adair, a vice president for Frasier Solar’s developer, Open Road Renewables. “As always, Frasier Solar stands ready and willing to address local residents’ legitimate concerns about potential impacts of solar development.”  

Statements at Knox Smart Development meetings and in ads have included multiple examples of misinformation. For example, Yost admitted during cross-examination he was unaware that a photo showing damaged solar panels was taken in St. Croix after a strong hurricane — a highly unlikely event in central Ohio. 

“This was intended to show what I believe could happen,” Yost said. 

Other examples include unsupported claims about solar panels and other components releasing toxic chemicals. Steve Goreham, a speaker at the group’s November 2023 town hall, made unsupported claims about climate change. Goreham also drew spurious correlations between electricity price rises and high levels of renewable energy in California and Texas. In fact, wildfires, extreme heat and transmission upgrades were the driving factors.

Misinformation was rife in opposition testimony people gave at three local public hearings held by the Ohio Power Siting Board in Knox County.

Half of more than 100 unique arguments made by project opponents at those hearings were not supported by the facts, said Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, a professor at Cleveland State University College of Law, in her August 22 expert testimony for the Ohio Environmental Council.

“In the aggregate, the arguments do not present credible or compelling opposition to the proposed project,” Robertson said.

Connections confirmed between ‘grassroots’ Ohio solar opposition and dark-money natural gas group is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The pair of 1950s-era coal plants bailed out under Ohio’s House Bill 6 law are likely to remain unprofitable even after a surge in grid operator payments to generators, experts say. 

The PJM Interconnection grid market makes capacity payments to line up power to meet expected demand in the years ahead. Aging, uneconomical coal plants are being retired at a time when data centers and manufacturers are starting to use more electricity, causing future power generation prices to rise.

But even record-high prices in PJM Interconnection’s recent capacity auction won’t cover the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies paid by ratepayers to cover Ohio utilities’ costs for the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation’s Kyger Creek and Clifty Creek power plants.

“Even with a super high price, OVEC is still going to be in the red,” said Neil Waggoner, Midwest manager for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

The ratepayer subsidies are a result of HB 6, the 2019 state law at the heart of the largest corruption scheme in Ohio’s history. Republican legislative leaders have blocked all efforts to repeal the coal subsidies from coming to a floor vote.

This year alone, ratepayers are on track to pay nearly $200 million to prop up the two plants, one of which is in Indiana. By 2030, total ratepayer costs from the bailout could exceed $1 billion, according to RunnerStone, a consultant for the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association.

Starting next summer, the payments for generators to be ready to supply electricity when PJM Interconnection needs it will jump to about nine times the current rate for most of the grid operator’s service region. 

“Put simply, the market pays participants for the promise to produce electricity when called upon by PJM,” said Daniel Lockwood, a spokesperson for the regional grid operator. An auction sets the levels for each year’s capacity payments, and the payments go to generators that bid the clearing price or less.

A spokesperson for the power plants did not directly answer the Energy News Network’s question about whether both cleared the latest PJM auction, although he described the auction results as “positive.”

“The auction results were a positive development for the OVEC plants and are more broadly a signal to the market that additional generation resources are needed in the PJM region,” said Scott Blake, a spokesperson for American Electric Power and Ohio Valley Electric Corp. While the HB 6 rider charges depend on multiple factors, the impact of the 2025/2026 capacity pricing “is expected to be positive for customers,” he said.

AEP is OVEC’s largest shareholder, along with other utility companies in Ohio and other states.

HB 6’s OVEC subsidies currently require Ohio’s residential utility customers to pay between $1.30 and $1.50 per month, depending on whether their utility is owned by AEP, AES Ohio, Duke Energy or FirstEnergy, according to PUCO data from spokesperson Brittany Waugaman. Businesses pay for the rider, too. The HB 6 rider’s net total costs last year were more than $148 million.

Doing the math

While capacity payments will reduce the OVEC plants’ total costs to Ohio ratepayers, the revenue won’t, in itself, make the plants profitable.

Expert testimony from a Michigan case last year found the OVEC plants would need capacity payments averaging about $418/MW-day for several years to become economical. Last month’s record-high price that will take effect next summer was about $270/MW-day.

Economic analyst Devi Glick of Synapse Energy Economics testified in the case on behalf of the Sierra Club.

“To massively oversimplify the economics of the OVEC plants, there are two categories of costs and two categories of revenues,” Glick told Energy News Network. “Costs are on one side of the equation and revenues on the other.”

Based on then-current projections for costs and energy market revenue, Glick calculated what the plants’ capacity revenues would have to be for the equation to balance out.

Several caveats would apply, Waggoner acknowledged, including any differences from last year to this year that could affect projected energy revenues. Nonetheless, he noted, a significant gap would remain.

Glick’s estimate of about $418 as a break-even capacity price for the OVEC plants is realistic and may even be conservative now, said John Seryak, managing partner for RunnerStone.

“PJM is no longer paying for a coal plant’s full power capacity anymore under new rules it created just prior to this capacity auction,” Seryak explained. “That could mean that OVEC needs even higher-priced capacity and energy to be profitable.”

“Future energy market prices, OVEC’s future coal costs, and OVEC’s environmental compliance costs will also be important factors determining the extent of its losses or profitability,” Seryak continued. “All that said, we do not anticipate OVEC operating at a profit without further price increases.”

Meeting energy demand

Blake emphasized the OVEC plants’ role as a “reliable generation resource for our customers and for our region,” adding that the HB 6 rider “ensures that customers in Ohio receive electricity from OVEC for what it costs to produce it and the funds are used to pay down debt with no proceeds going to shareholders.”

That’s not exactly correct, said attorney Kimberly Bojko at Carpenter Lipps, who represents the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association in cases at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. “Customers pay the cost to operate and run OVEC and the power produced from OVEC is then sold into the wholesale electric market,” she said. Any revenue offsets the costs of HB 6’s coal subsidy.

The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association also has disputed the use of the HB 6 rider to pay down the OVEC plants’ debt in cases before the PUCO.

“By using ratepayer funds to pay down its debt, AEP Ohio is essentially shifting its bad debt to the Ohio ratepayers,” Seryak said. “It’s akin to if a person forced their neighbor to pay for their mortgage payment.”

“Customers pay for more than just OVEC’s debt, though,” Seryak added. “Customers also pay for losses in the energy market OVEC incurs. When this occurs, it means the electric grid does not need OVEC for reliability. Instead, OVEC is burning coal pointlessly at a loss and charging it to Ohio’s ratepayers.”

Ohio coal plant subsidies still a bad deal for ratepayers despite growing generation demand, experts say is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Ohio clean energy projects under an Inflation Reduction Act grant announced last month show how solar sited on closed landfills can reduce greenhouse gases, improve resilience and provide funding for other environmental goals.

Part of the $129.4 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will add 28 megawatts of solar generation to a county central services facility and four former landfill sites in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. A bigger chunk of the funding will bring 35 MW of solar and 10 MW of battery storage to a brownfield site in Painesville in Lake County, which will let the city close a coal-fired peaker plant that dates back to 1908.

Representatives of the Cleveland, Painesville and Cuyahoga County governments, along with the EPA and others, met July 26 at Cuyahoga County’s 4 MW solar array in Brooklyn, Ohio, to discuss the grant and the work. Funding from the EPA grant will more than double the generation capacity of that landfill solar site, which has been in operation since 2018.

“In Northeast Ohio we’re going to see warmer, wetter, wilder weather in this region. And we have to do our part to address climate change,” said Mike Foley, director of sustainability for Cuyahoga County.

Funded projects under the grant are expected to eliminate the equivalent of 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over a 25-year period, with the largest cuts coming from deploying the solar projects in Cuyahoga County, Cleveland and Painesville, according to Valerie Katz, deputy director of sustainability for Cuyahoga County. 

The biggest chunk of grant money will go to Painesville, which is in Lake County east of Cleveland. But the 28 MW of solar generation to be built in Cuyahoga County will have a big impact.

“This will triple our solar capacity in Cuyahoga County in the next five years,” Katz said.

The landfill and brownfield projects funded by the grant will do more than produce electricity. By avoiding pollution from fossil fuels, they’ll provide health and environmental benefits. They’ll also produce revenue.

Some of the revenue from the brownfield solar site in Painesville will fund natural habitat for pollinators, birds and other wildlife elsewhere on that site. The city plans to work with the West Creek Conservancy for that and other projects, including building public trails and creating access for fishing.

Cuyahoga County also plans to use revenue from its sites to deploy more solar, Katz said. The added solar, in turn, can help develop microgrids to boost resiliency.

Making landfill solar work

While closed landfills provide plenty of open space, they also are often capped by membranes made from clay or other materials that cannot be damaged without risking environmental harm.

Solar arrays at these sites are feasible thanks to ballast systems, which have been fairly common for such uses for more than a decade. Huge concrete blocks anchor the solar array’s racks and panels. The blocks, or ballasts, support the array and protect it from wind. 

“They’re not going through the cap, which works out great for us,” said Jarnal Singh, an environmental supervisor with Ohio EPA’s Twinsburg office in its division of materials and waste management.

Without holes in the cap, the solar array doesn’t provide a pathway for methane or other gases to escape from the landfill. Leaving the cap intact also avoids creating a pathway for water to get in and percolate through the waste. That liquid, called leachate, could pollute groundwater if it’s not collected and treated properly.

Ohio has 141 landfill sites that have been subject to the state’s post-closure care requirements, according to Anthony Chenault, the Ohio EPA’s media coordinator for its Central, Northeast and Southeast districts. The agency has approved four landfills for solar development so far and has had informal discussions about several more sites.

But other practical considerations and site-specific features control whether any particular landfill is suitable for solar development.

“Some factors that could determine viability of a solar installation include proximity to existing power lines, size of the landfill, condition of the landfill cover, ownership (public vs private), and accessibility for equipment and maintenance,” Chenault said via email.

A few years should have passed since a landfill was closed and capped, so some settlement and off-gassing has already taken place, said Scott Ameduri, president of Enerlogics Networks, which was the primary developer for the Cuyahoga County solar site. There also must be a financially sound owner willing to accept responsibility for the waste at the site, he said.

Just as importantly, the electricity will need somewhere to go and a way to get there.

“In Brooklyn, for example, we were fortunate that Cleveland Public Power is a municipal utility,” Ameduri said. Municipal utilities are generally more flexible about making arrangements to take and distribute power than investor-owned utilities, he noted. Community solar legislation, such as House Bill 197, could help change things on that front, he added.

Another option is to have a large off-taker for the electricity adjacent to or near the landfill. The 7 MW of new grant-funded solar power to be built on a landfill south of the IX Center in Cuyahoga County can go to the expo center or the nearby Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, Ameduri said. The general area is also under consideration for one of the Cuyahoga County utility’s microgrids.

Otherwise, a landfill solar project putting electricity onto the grid may require a go-ahead from the regional grid operator, which is PJM for Ohio. The process takes roughly three to five years and adds extra costs. “I’d rather spread that over a 100-MW project than I would for a smaller brownfield site,” Ameduri said.

For now, Cleveland, Painesville and Cuyahoga County are celebrating the EPA grant award.

“This investment will allow us right here in Cleveland to turn brownfields into bright fields,” said Mayor Justin Bibb.

Inflation Reduction Act grant gives landfill solar a boost in Ohio is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Research underway at a Madison County solar farm promises to shed light on how well multi-use farming can work at a large scale. The answers will help shape best practices for future projects, while addressing some concerns raised in ongoing debates over siting large solar projects in rural farm areas.

Spread across more than 1,900 acres, the 180 MW Madison Fields project will be one of North America’s largest test grounds for research into agrivoltaics — essentially farming between the rows on photovoltaic solar projects.

As farmers seek to lease land for solar arrays to diversify their incomes, the practice could help them maximize their income and fend off opposition from critics concerned that solar development will take prime farmland out of production.

Some farmers have also said the revenue from clean energy can help keep their farms operating amid pressure from housing developers. A recent report from the American Farmland Trust says Ohio could lose more than 518,000 acres of farmland to urban sprawl by 2040.

That number dwarfs the roughly 95,000 acres for certified and other projects noted on the Ohio Power Siting Board’s most recent solar case status map. 

Yet solar projects generally deal with big chunks of land at once, while urban sprawl happens bit by bit over time, said Dale Arnold, director of energy policy for the Ohio Farm Bureau. Helping people understand and appreciate that is “absolutely huge,” he said.

Savion, a Shell subsidiary, developed the Madison County project, and it began commercial operation on July 11 with Amazon as the long-term buyer for its energy. Yet work began much earlier this year to set up the site for research by Ohio State University scientists, Savion’s Between the Rows subsidiary, and others.

“People have a lot of questions with regard to energy development going forward in this state,” particularly when it comes to taking land out of use for agricultural production, Arnold said.

Yet today’s industry continues to shift away from coal to a diversified portfolio of natural gas, nuclear, hydropower, wind energy, solar energy and other types of generation. Forecasts also show there will be growing demand for electricity by mid-century, he said.

“Finding a balance where you can do a number of things on the same ground — in this case energy production as well as agricultural production — is obviously huge,” Arnold said. If agrivoltaics is to become more than a buzzword, though, both farmers and solar project developers need to work out best practices.

One big issue is what crops can work well for large-scale utility projects. Compared to most solar farms projects in Eastern and Piedmont states, utility-scale solar projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states can spread across 1,000 acres or more, Arnold said.

“You hear a lot about produce and specialty crops,” for example, said Sarah Moser, Savion’s director of farm operations and agrivoltaics. But raising them is “hard to do on 1,000 acres.”

Hay, you!

Moser and Ohio State University researchers think forage crops like alfalfa and hay hold promise. Operations can be scaled up for large areas, said Eric Romich, an Ohio State University Extension field specialist for energy development. And the crops wouldn’t grow too tall amid the panels.

“We also wanted something that we felt had the potential to be economical,” Romich said.

Two 2023 reports by Ohio State University Extension researchers found raising hay and alfalfa between rows of solar panels was feasible and that the harvest’s nutritive value was good. But that small-scale work at the Pigtail Farms site in Van Wert County used data from only a few test plots and controls, which is an important limitation, Romich said.

Work at Madison Fields will now test whether similar results can be achieved at large scale. Part of a $1.6 million grant from the Department of Energy will help pay for that work over the course of four years.

Other research will test how well plants do in sun versus shade, Romich said. That matters because some portion of the land among solar panels will always be shaded.

Researchers planted the crops on test fields and control areas this spring, with an eye toward starting to collect data next year. “Forages are quite temperamental in terms of trying to get them established,” said Braden Campbell, an animal scientist at Ohio State University who is also working on the project. The team has found compacted soil around the solar panels, “but we are relieved to see that the seeds that we put into the ground are growing,” he said.

Moser plans to work with other crops, too. Soybeans are one example. They were already used as a cover crop before alfalfa and hay were planted. Soybeans can also work into a crop rotation when forage crops need to be replanted every few years.

“The market is there for it, and it does well” as a hardy crop which can also loosen soil and restore nutrients to it, Moser said, adding that local communities have expressed interest in the crop as well.

Send in the sheep

Other work at Madison Fields will explore complementary grazing. The goal is to harvest the forage crops as efficiently as possible. But there will still be a need for vegetation control under and around panels and other infrastructure, said Campbell. So, after harvesting, sheep will go to work.

“To me, that’s three commodities that we can get off one unit of land,” Campbell said: Solar panels will produce electricity. Hay and alfalfa growing will provide a crop. And the land will help support sheep, which in turn can produce meat, milk and fiber.

Other solar farms already use or plan to use sheep for vegetation control. But “there is a big difference” between using sheep to keep plants under control and relying on that for their nutrition, Campbell said.

Studies will need to test the health of sheep that do complementary grazing, compared to other sheep. Other questions include finding optimal grazing rates of sheep per acre, as well as other logistics. But first, the forage needs to establish good roots so it can withstand the pressure of grazing.

Tractors and more

A third bucket of research questions under the Department of Energy grant will focus on farm equipment. Tractors and other farm vehicles need to fit between the rows with their attachments. There’s been a trend in the agricultural sector toward wider equipment, which can cover more ground quickly but may not fit between rows of solar panels, Moser said.

“But a lot of farmers still have smaller equipment,” Moser continued, because some parcels aren’t appropriate for wider machinery. Maneuvering 15-foot-wide equipment works fairly well, and 17-foot and even 20-foot widths can still work. 

“I could get my 20-foot drill in there,” Moser said. “I just have to be careful.”

Arnold speculated that some companies may develop special equipment whose attachments can fit under solar panel rows more easily. Other possibilities could include raising panels or even feathering them when agricultural equipment is in use, he suggested.

Farm equipment doesn’t just need to go down an alley between two rows of solar panels. It will also have to turn around at the end to go down another one, Arnold said. So, there needs to be an adequate turning radius, without cables blocking farm vehicles’ paths. Poles, stands, and other equipment also can’t block the path of the farm equipment, he said.

The research can help guide the design of future solar projects to be “hay-ready” sites, Romich suggested. At the same time, agricultural operations shouldn’t jeopardize the safe and efficient operation of a solar facility. “It’s an operating power plant,” Romich said.

Arnold has additional questions about infrastructure needs: What facilities will be necessary to dry, bale and store forage? What facilities will other crops need? And how will they be trucked out to markets?

Likewise, what equipment and facilities will be needed for any sheep kept on site?  That includes paddock fencing, water, and so forth. And where will their caretaker live? 

“You’re going to have to have people there full-time,” Arnold said.

Precision agriculture

The Ohio State researchers, Moser, and others also wonder how well precision agriculture can work with solar farms. The term refers to methods that rely on technology and data to guide farmers’ work. The range of technologies includes remote sensing of field conditions with drones, in-ground sensors, automated weeders and more.

The big question is which precision agriculture technologies can work well for crops planted between rows of solar panels as they generate electricity.

It’s unclear what any of the studies will show until data has been collected and analyzed, Romich said. By the end, he feels the work will provide a better understanding of what will or won’t work.

Economics questions about business models, contractual arrangements and more also must eventually be worked out, Arnold said. At the end of the day, farmers will need to make a profit if agriculture is to successfully blend with solar projects.

“The possibilities are limitless, really,” when it comes to business arrangements, Moser said. “My motto is always, ‘farmers figure it out.’ And if we work with them, we’ll figure…out how to do this with best practices.”

Large-scale Ohio research project to explore how solar and farming can co-exist is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.