Developers for a solar project in Logan County withdrew their application for construction, after a recommended denial from the Ohio Power Siting Board.
The reason the application wasn’t recommended for approval: local opposition.
Developers lay down initial groundwork
The project, Grange Solar, was a proposed 2,570 acre solar facility that could produce up to 500 megawatts of power. It was going to be placed in the Indian Lake area in the Washington, Stokes, Richland, McArthur and Bloomfield townships.
The developer, Open Road Renewables, first submitted its application to the Ohio Power Siting Board in October 2024. But the process began well before that.
Before the application reached the board, the developers had already leased several thousand acres of land from 20 different landowners, and established an interconnection agreement with regional electric grid operator, PJM, said Doug Herling, vice president of Open Road Renewables.
“Logan County especially is home to a very large transmission line. And we targeted that line in 2020 seeing there was a lot of capacity on it,” Herling said.
The project was also going to feature thousands of sheep to graze the land around the solar panels, a practice known as agrivoltaics.
Grange Solar received public co-signs from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, environmental groups such as Ohio Citizen Action and Ohio Environmental Council, and three local unions.
Open Road Renewables said it would have created more than a thousand jobs, over $100 million of investment into the area and up to $5 million annually to the host townships and Logan County.
These facets contributed to the project meeting six of the seven criteria needed for a project to be approved, including a “minimum adverse environmental impact” and “serving the interests of electric system economy and reliability.”
But no "clear path" after local opposition
But the one criteria it didn’t meet was “the public interest, necessity and convenience,” according to Ohio Power Siting Board staff. Its report was filed on Feb. 21, a week before Open Road withdrew its Grange Solar application.
“So if one of the criteria is not met, then that recommendation comes down as a recommended denial,” said Matthew Butler, a spokesperson for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
“That left us seeing that there likely really wasn't a very clear path forward. We thought we could still get this done potentially, but at what cost and on what timeline?”
On top of hundreds of public comments submitted against the project, all five townships in the project area, Logan County commissioners and several state legislators representing Logan County submitted letters opposing its construction.
The Ohio Power Siting Board project voting board is not beholden to the recommendation and Grange still could have gone to vote, said Butler. But a recommended denial created a bleak outlook, Herling said.
“That left us seeing that there likely really wasn't a very clear path forward. We thought we could still get this done potentially, but at what cost and on what timeline?” Herling said.
Residents organized to stop it
A group of residents that helped to demonstrate local opposition was the Indian Lake Advocacy Group.
Aubrey Snapp, a Washington Township resident, was one of the locals that resisted its construction. She said herself and other residents put up signs around the communities, organized protests at meetings concerning the project, and created a petition that garnered more than 800 signatures.
She said they were fearful of the impacts it could have on the tourism industry and the nuisance construction could create.
“So the money that they were throwing at us, to me, wasn't worth it, because we've been able to operate so far without it,” Snapp said.
Logan County passed a resolution in 2022 banning utility-scale solar and wind projects in its unincorporated areas and 16 of the 17 townships in the county; a power bestowed to counties through Senate Bill 52.
Around 35 of Ohio’s 88 counties have passed resolutions restricting solar and wind energy projects in at least one of its townships, PUCO estimates. This is as of Jan. 31.
The reason this project went before the board was because Open Road had already established an agreement with PJM before the passage of the county resolution.
“I'm not sure why they continued to push forward,” Snapp said. “But at the end of the day, there were really no negotiating points for us. We didn't want the project in any form.”
Logan County Commissioner Michael Yoder was to make a vote as an ad-hoc member for the project before stepping down last month after the developers argued that the county commissioners could not lawfully intervene due to conflict of interest, according to a motion they filed last month.
“Grange requests expedited treatment of this Motion so the Board’s Staff will have the benefit of the decision prior to issuing its Staff Report,” the document read.
Yoder said Open Road Renewables tried to be good neighbors at first.
“They were getting to the end here, and I think they felt some desperation in trying to get (the project) through because they thought that it was not going their direction,” Yoder said.
Ohio solar projects under increasing pressure
The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio estimates that, as of Jan. 31, 35 of Ohio’s 88 counties have passed resolutions restricting solar and wind energy projects in at least one of its townships.
The only other proposed solar project in Logan County, Fountain Point, was approved in September 2024. However, that decision is currently being challenged in the Ohio Supreme Court.
Herling said Open Road will shift its focus to other Ohio solar projects it has in its pipeline, such as Harvey Solar in Licking County and Frasier Solar in Knox County.
“We just made this decision here to move on to the next project, take what we've learned and apply it,” he said. “I think it's a really unfortunate thing for Logan County to miss out on this kind of investment. But that's where we're at.”
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