I fully support the approach outlined by Julie Bolthouse in your article “Rural counties wrestle with solar power demands from Northern Virginia” of Oct. 6.
I would like to add three thoughts to the discussion. First, at some point the growth in “for profit” solar farms will drive VEPCO to increase the size or install new power transmission systems. This means some of our neighbors will have land taken for this infrastructure.
Second, as a county adjacent to a major metropolitan area it is very doubtful that developed land will return to traditional rural uses. Therefore, I wonder why we should enable a permanent change in our environment when the Microsofts and universities buying the power place little to no generation infrastructure on their own properties. I will be more agreeable to building solar farms in the county if Northern Virginia is covered by solar panels.
While building large solar farms on farm and rural land is the cheapest way to deploy solar power generation, the industry has developed standards (UL 1741, IEEE 1574, etc.) to enable thousands of small (home-sized) systems to sell to the grid. This means there are alternatives to large monolithic arrays of solar panels.
Fred Smith
Broad Run
