Rodney Peterson has been a Dodge County commissioner for 17 years. Lauren Cornelius is the Dodge County Environmental Specialist. Dodge County has utility and farm-scale renewable energy systems including solar arrays, and Rodney and Lauren recently worked together with other county leadership to create a new county ordinance for solar projects. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What do you know about distributed renewable energy projects in Dodge County? Have farmers or residents had good experiences?

Rodney: There are a few residents that have implemented renewable energy and from everything I’ve heard, they’ve been very happy with it. They received matching funds for the cost of the solar arrays, and the amount they’ve had to pay for electricity has gone significantly down. A local homeowner that was paying $200 is now sometimes only making minimum payments like $20, or not paying anything and even getting money back. So in that sense, it’s been very good for the residential homeowners and businesses. I also know the county has a contract with an array that’s just outside our government service building, and we get our energy from that array.

Lauren: We actually do have quite a few farmers that have solar panels on their farms. A lot of people come to us to get zoning permits for small scale projects on their sites. If there are barriers for them to implement these projects, they’re experiencing them prior to coming to us. When they come to us, they’re just looking to get the zoning permit, and we’re making sure they’re meeting setbacks and everything like that.  

Rodney: Since farming income is very dynamic and one good year can be followed by three bad years, my guess is that it would be a financial discussion for farmers to make the move towards spending money on a solar array to help reduce energy cost. And from what I’ve heard, any cost of production is a concern for farmers. In areas like fertilizer and seeds, the inputs are astronomically hard right now, so those are the major concerns. Since fuel is lower than those production costs it’s not as immediate a concern. However, I do think anytime farmers can reduce their costs, they’d be receptive to it. I know some farmers are looking at electric vehicles for their farm to reduce fossil fuel costs.  

The Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which pays for 30% of a distributed renewable energy project, is being phased out by the federal government. Do you think that will impact projects in your community?

Rodney: Yeah, I think the ITC was a significant reason that a lot of people I’ve talked to actually started these projects. They said the numbers wouldn’t have worked out for them otherwise, or they didn’t have the funds to do it. I think it’ll have a big impact.

How has your community responded to utility-scale renewable energy projects in Dodge County? Are they having an impact on the agriculture community?

Rodney: One perspective for large solar arrays is that it’s a zero sum game  –  the loss of the production of that land is evened out by the production of the energy. However, my personal view is that these utility scale projects are paying way more for the land than farmers do, while also taking thousands of acres out of agricultural production for decades. The consequence is that in the broader community, thousands of acres less of soybeans are purchased, or if it was corn acres then the community’s elevator will lose business. So these large solar projects can cause negative effects on the local economy and rural community, and we want to keep those things alive.

In terms of what we were seeing with these projects in Dodge County, there has been some issues, one being stray voltage. Solar or wind energy has to get on the grid, but if you have a neighbor nearby that has cattle, especially dairy cows, they can be affected by stray voltage from those systems. We had a dairy farmer that was saying his cattle were being affected by stray voltage from the solar project next to his land.

Lauren: Being an ag community, stormwater management is another issue we are dealing with. Solar arrays are often referred to as a pass over impervious surface, but the panels are actually creating concentrated runoff just like a house that doesn’t have gutters. If the water is not appropriately managed, it can cause serious flooding on nearby fields and affect farmers who are not getting paid by the solar farm.

Another issue has been weed management. We’ve received complaints about solar farms with weeds that are out of control, but these solar projects tend to change hands often, so our office never knows who to contact and we have to track down site managers to remind them that their plan requires them to do maintenance. Our county works hard to keep those managers accountable to the things that they promised.

What solutions has your county come up with to resolve some of those issues?

Rodney: Because of some issues we had with utility-scale solar panels going up, we did a moratorium at the county level so we could get more information and implement an ordinance that was good for everybody. We wanted to ensure that residents can do what they wanted on their land without affecting the environment and their neighbors. Lauren is our environmental director and she’s very knowledgeable on the topic. She and her staff were very helpful in helping us set up what I believe was the best ordinance in the state of Minnesota for solar arrays at the county level.  

What are the performance standards you included in the solar ordinance for Dodge County?

Lauren: Stormwater basins are one of the key performance standards in the ordinance. There’s only certain kinds of basins we allow that are based on the soil conditions of where a solar project is being proposed. We also have a pretty detailed screening process to make sure that they have a certain amount of trees that are planted as a visual buffer between the solar panels and the roads.  

We also now have a large decommissioning bond. We wanted to make sure the county isn’t on the hook to pay for the removal of the panels and wires if a company abandons a project. The decommissioning bond ensures that we have funds to utilize to get rid of the panels.   

These were some of the big kicker items that were important to the community when we looked at our performance standards for solar farms.

Has the ordinance for solar energy in Dodge County been effective?  

Rodney: After creating the ordinance we saw LLCs being created to circumvent the county ordinance limit. They would install an array with one company and then right next door, install another array with a different company.  

Lauren: Like Rod was saying, Minnesota Statutes 272.0295 stipulates which Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) are subject to the Solar Energy Production Tax per mega-watt. Dodge County has several concerns with this statute, as a landowner can have the same company under different LLC names. They could come back every year to construct new facilities under 1 MW and the site would never be subject to production tax. Additionally, the statute relies on the owner of the SEGS to self-report on whether they produced over 1 MW subject to the solar energy production tax.  

Are there other groups that oversee utility-scale solar energy projects in Dodge County?

Lauren: When the projects get over 50 megawatts, that’s when the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) takes over permitting. They don’t have the same performance standards that we have at our local level, and that has been a concern for both the community and local government.  

With growing concern in the agricultural community about prime farmland being lost to these projects, there has been different discussions about how this can be avoided. The MN Corn Growers (MCGA) have drafted an Agricultural Priority Land List legislative proposal. Counties may create an Agricultural Priority Land list and designate any number of parcels within their jurisdiction as Agricultural Priority Land, assuming the parcels meet certain criteria, and then submit the list of Agricultural Priority Lands to the Public Utilities Commission. The Public Utilities Commission must acknowledge receipt of the list in the state register within 30 days.  

Do you think that local ownership of renewable energy installations would change how these projects are managed? For example, let’s say local residents pooled their money to cooperatively own a five megawatt solar installation.

Lauren: I think so. The reason these projects are sometimes not favorable to people in rural parts of Minnesota is because they don’t consider local interest and needs. Residents want to know how they can have a voice at the table. The second thing people want to know is where the energy is going. If it’s a project that is being kept local, then you’re definitely going to get more of a positive response and it’s going to have more of a positive effect on the community.   

Rodney: We have a huge windmill plan coming in to Dodge County that will be taking a large parcel of land out of agricultural production and will create powerlines through our county using state money, but the energy is going to be sent out of state. So I’ll validate what Lauren is saying.

What is your hope for the future of renewable energy in Dodge County? How do you feel is the best way to move forward?

Lauren: I would love to bridge the gap by working together with developers in a positive way and fixing the perception on renewable energy, because it’s not going away. That way Dodge County can feel more comfortable about our voice being heard. Right now I feel like we haven’t been asked to have a seat at the table, and I feel like that pertains not only to Dodge County, but rural Minnesota in general.

I’ve been to a couple of sites that do AgriVoltaics up north in Minnesota and it’s a pretty cool thing. I’ve seen grazing animals underneath solar panels, or produce being grown as food that is sent to food banks. Something like that would be great for our community to have. We should continue to explore positive outcomes from these utility-scale energy projects that directly impact the community they are in, rather than just utilizing the land.

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Minnesota Farmers Union Foundation develops stories about farmers’ and rural residents’ experiences with renewable energy across the state. Click here to read more articles in this series.