County collects first solar PILOT; Palomino Solar developers announce construction plans

Area solar projects were discussed at Highland County commissioners’ Wednesday, March 5 meeting, as progress is being made on one project, while the county received its first payment for another, nearly two years after issuing an invoices.

Highland County commissioner Brad Roades announced Wednesday that the county has received its first Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT, from the New Market Solar I project, in the amount of $315,000. As previously reported, commissioners voted to issue a PILOT invoice for the project March 22, 2023. The county was later informed that they would not be able to collect payment until “a certificate of verification” was issued by the state for the project.

According to an Aug. 29, 2024 email from Ted Geer, Deputy Chief, Policy & Special Projects, Ohio Department of Development Director Lydia Mihalik issued an order Aug. 23 for “New Market to remit to the Highland County Treasurer a sum of $315,000 on or before the final date for payments of public utility property taxes.”

Roades said that Highland County Auditor Alex Butler advised that the funding “will get disbursed as needed” at the first-half tax settlement.

As previously reported, the “amount of the annual PILOT shall be $7,000 per megawatt,” and “the amount of the additional annual service payment shall be $2,000 per megawatt,” for a combined $9,000 per megawatt — the maximum allowable under state law. As discussed last September, of thee $315,000 being invoiced, $245,000 is the “annual service payment” that will be distributed among various entities (schools, townships, etc.) and $70,000 is a “discretionary service payment” that goes to the county.

In unrelated solar news, commissioners heard from four representatives from Innergex. The group announced next steps for Palomino Solar upon reaching what community and government relations representative Janet Grothe called “a major milestone in our project” with approval of their Large Generator Interconnection Agreement (LGIA) with PJM, the regional transmission organization, for the project.

The planned 200 MW Palomino Solar project in Highland County will be located in Dodson and Union Townships. Innergex is also the developer of the Hillcrest Solar farm in Brown County.

“I’m pleased to let you know that we have received our Large Generator Interconnection Agreement, and we are working to finalize it,” Grothe told commissioners. “The development team is preparing to hand the project over to the construction team.

“We've been really busy behind the scenes getting things prepared.”

Along with Grothe, attending the meeting were project director Samuel Richard, construction manager Jason Sirois and senior environmental manager Madison Walsh, all of whom shared updates from their individual perspectives.

Richard said that the company hopes to “be in a good position to start work” in the fourth quarter of this year.

“Now that we have our LGIA being executed, our contractor is going to be busy finalizing the design, integrating all of the material that we've selected for this project,” Richard said. “We have selected and received our panels. They're currently in storage. We also have the main power transformers that are en route to Texas, where they'll be stored for a few months, and we've also selected the racking as well as the inverters.

“All of the big pieces of equipment have been selected and are currently integrated into our design. We'll be also performing some final geotech investigations on select parcels throughout next week in order to support the finalization of our design. In the meantime, we'll also be finalizing our main contract with the contractor that we selected, and hopefully we'll be able to make it public in the next month or so.”

As manager of the Palomino Solar construction, Sirois told commissioners he would “be living in the community” throughout the duration of the construction process.

“As mentioned, we'll be starting construction this fall, and that'll mostly be clearing and civil work,” Sirois said. “We’ll shut down for the winter, and we'll start up in the spring and start our major construction all through the year.”

Walsh, who is working on permitting for the project, told commissioners that she is conducting meetings with local landowners and organizations before construction begins.

“We met with Highland County Soil and Water Conservation District yesterday to talk about storm water management practices, some communication protocols preconstruction and as well as any lessons learned from recent projects in the area,” Walsh said. “Today, we'll be meeting with the county engineer to talk about construction and any applicable permits we'll need on that level.

“Our construction and operational environmental management plans are progressing, and we're targeting to schedule our preconstruction conference with the Power Siting Board this summer.”

Grothe said another member of the Innergex team, land manager Lauren Odell, would also be scheduling meetings in the coming months “to meet with landowners and talk about the very specifics of their land and what it's going to look like.

“Some land that's outside of the project area has been released back to the landowners for their use,” Grothe said.

Commissioner Terry Britton asked if the state had a “schedule” for their “oversight of the project,” as the county has seen “an issue with setbacks” on another project. (The Ohio Power Siting Board ruled that New Market Solar violated minimum setback requirements last year.)

“We will have that preconstruction conference to kick off, and then at that time, they'll be sharing kind of how their compliance inspections are going to go,” Walsh said. “I know that they have had more of onsite presence with their recent projects, so at that time, we'll try and work through all of those protocols.”

Grothe added that at a recent meeting in Columbus, she was told the OPSB “would be going by every site operating and [under] construction at least once a month.

“I think we’re seeing more engagement,” she said. “They really want a collaborative partnership with community and the developers and the operators.”

In other updates, Grothe said that Innergex would be “the featured speaker/sponsor” of the Highland County Chamber of Commerce’s annual Ag Is Everyone’s Business event Friday, March 7 and informed commissioners that Innergex has recently reached an agreement with CDPQ, or Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, an investment group that she said “is going to acquire all of our issued and outstanding common stock from Innergex.

“We don't foresee any changes of our commitment to the communities,” Grothe said. “They share that with us, and we don't see any changes to the agreement, and we retain the Innergex name.”

Commissioners thanked the group for the information and asked them to keep the county informed of future updates.

For more from Wednesday’s meeting, go to: https://highlandcountypress.com/news/commissioners-issue-4-h-week-procl….

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