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In the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland area, there are currently over 500 utility- or grade-scale solar energy projects that have been proposed, according to Tom Murphy, director of Penn State's Marcellus Shale Center for Outreach.
"The reason we state that quite often is so that municipalities, county governments, kind of can get their heads around what does this mean? Is it just a small little blip out there or is this a big deal that's coming at us and how should we prepare for it," Murphy said.
An important consideration for the projects in Pennsylvania which are spread all over the state is that probably somewhere between 10% and 20% will actually be built, which is still a "reasonably big number."
"New projects will continue to be proposed over the course of time," Murphy said, adding that it was important to keep in mind that these are utility-scale projects.
"The reason that I say that is there's also some pending legislation in the House and Senate looking at community-scale solar possibly in Pennsylvania," he said.
States that are contiguous to Pennsylvania already have community solar, but currently, it is not permitted in the state.
"Landowners are being approached and municipalities and counties should probably be aware of that when they're thinking of their ordinance development," he said.
In Lycoming County, the Planning and Community Development Office started receiving questions about the county's solar policy which resulted in them passing a solar use ordinance this summer.
"We started seeing what the local residents were looking for. So, we did a two-pronged approach. We looked at accessory solar energy systems first because that was a fairly simple lift. We felt that anybody who was interested in offsetting their energy costs, we wanted to try and aid them if they so choose," said Shannon Rossman, director of the county's office.
"We did a bunch of research with regard to the small systems that will be associated with a residence, or even a larger system that will be associated with a business," she said.
Accessory solar energy systems are allowed in all zoning districts in Lycoming County.
"The heavy lift came with the solar energy facilities where it's more utility-scale," she said. "That was where we had to do a lot more research."
Their research included talking with other planning directors and municipalities and sought the input of Murphy and others at a state and county level, seeking a good example to model for the county's ordinance.
"I know we actually based a lot of our information to start with, off Montour County, because they were seeing a number of large facilities at the time," Rossman said.
Having dealt with the accessory systems in 2021, county planning started researching example ordinances for the larger utility-scale solar facilities. Rossman detailed the process that her department and the county's planning commission went through in order to write an amendment to their current solar ordinance.
"We have to look at what they need to operate and where in our county, and in our 21 municipalities, that we do zoning for, is the most appropriate location for these," Rossman said.
"A key thing that we were concerned about is without the ability to do community solar scale where you're able to sell back more than a certain amount, we didn't feel that it would be a good idea to allow energy- or utility-scale solar in our commercial areas," she said.
"We would love to see in the future if community solar systems are allowed, there would be co-location on a facility that's in the industrial commercial area, but not be the primary use or it would be a second primary use," she said.
County planning also considered the effect a large installation might have on erosion and sediment control which in turn could impact tourism.
After addressing issues of how the solar system sites would be maintained so that they did devolve into "weed infested" facilities and the decommissioning of the systems, among other things, the country formulated the ordinance.
Trying to be equitable, county planning also understood that "sometimes a farmer needs to have other ways to make money," Rossman said.
Although they didn't want to be restrictive in drafting the ordinance, Rossman said, "We didn't want to have an entire farm turned into a solar energy facility."
"That being said, though, there's nothing wrong with putting it on the roofs of chicken facilities, calf barns and things like that. That's another reason why we would like to see community solar in the future so that we can hopefully keep as much open land, meaning agriculture or industrial commercial and things like that available for that type of use," she added.
Kimberly Gauntner, PPL Distribution and Tariff Rules Supervisor, also participated in the event.
Gauntner explained that her department handles applications for any type of renewable energy.
"It's my team's job to try to figure out how to continue to do two things -- operate a safe, reliable electric system and also encourage customers to install whatever type of renewable generation they see fit for themselves," she said.
One question raised by Yaw was if the state is prepared to recycle solar panels once they are decommissioned.
A ton of recycled panels was worth roughly $550 a ton, Snyder said.
"What they do is extract out the materials that are in there that can be easily extracted -- the aluminum, the wire and things of that nature. That's the physical extraction. Then, there could be potentially a chemical extraction where you can take out things through another method and then even a thermal," he said.
That would leave about 10% to 15% that couldn't have anything more extracted out of it, at least with current technologies, Snyder stated.
At this point, if a solar panel breaks, it probably would end up in the landfill. Snyder, however, feels that as the industry expands, someone will see a "business opportunity there and jump in using some of the technologies that we're already seeing in some countries."
With the enactment of the Inflation and Reduction Act, Yaw questioned if there could be an increase in the number of solar arrays.
"So you anticipate that this is something that's going to happen in Pennsylvania," Yaw asked.
"Absolutely," said Gauntner, "Over the last year as a whole we have seen significant increases in the number of solar applications as a utility," she said.
"This seems to be true with our neighboring utilities as well...so I would assume from my understanding of the Inflation Reduction Act that it will continue to increase in our service territory and we're prepared for that as a utility," she said.