More Solar Panels Appear Headed to Turner Rd.

Stephens County Commissioners approve a variance and conditional use request to add more solar panels to land on Turner Road in Eastanollee.

On Tuesday, the county commission approved the requests from United Renewable Energy to give them the go-ahead to add the solar panels on the back side of the current Turner Road solar panel farm.

United Renewable Energy Director of Operations Amber Wismer said that these new solar panels will not be visible from the road.

“This is set back with adequate buffer and woods already surrounding the property to where you will not be able to see it from any aspect of driving by, I do not expect,” said Wismer. “We will access the property from our existing driveway for the project that we completed in December 2014.”

While she said these panels should not cause any problems, much of the discussion focused on panels already in place that are apparently causing a problem for a couple of nearby residents.

Glenn Sheriff lives across the street and said that the panels are negatively affecting his home.

“I do not have a problem with them except for the heat and glare that comes off of them to my house,” said Sheriff. “They have already ruined some of my property, my wife’s car, and it is (hurting) the siding on my house.”

Sheriff said that glare has also caused the temperature at his house to go up and he had to buy another air conditioner and run it more, increasing his monthly power costs in the summer.

Wismer said she was aware of Sheriff’s problem and thought SunEdison, the company that operates the solar panels, had fixed it.

She said she was surprised to find out a few weeks ago it was not fixed.

According to Wismer, a fix is possible and is something United Renewable Energy will work to achieve.

“Some options we can consider is putting in a considerably mature vegetative buffer, increasing the size of the fence, but again what I would like to do from this point is address the issue with SunEdison in writing and find an engineered solution,” said Wismer. “I do not want to take a half-step and have it not meet his needs.”

Stephens County Commission Chair Dennis Bell said the problem needs to be fixed and the county needs to take what steps it can legally to make sure it is fixed.

“We are going to have some kind of resolution on this thing,” said Bell, who called on them to be cited under the nuisance ordinance if something is not done.

Other commissioners agreed that something needed to be done along those lines but multiple commissioners note that it has nothing to do with this request from United Renewable Energy.

Meanwhile, Stephens County Chief Tax Appraiser Christen Collier said that the solar panels have been a top contributor to increases in the county’s tax digest over the last several years.

“I wanted to make sure that if you pay property taxes in Stephens County, that anytime another solar farm is added, that helps us out, because every time they raise that digest, it gives you an opportunity to lower that mill rate,” said Collier.

Stephens County Commissioners voted 4 to 1 to approve the variance and conditional use requests from United Renewable Energy for the new solar panels on Turner Road, but in the motion called on Sheriff’s problem to be fixed.

Commissioner Stanley London voted against the motion, stating he would have liked to have seen Sheriff’s problem fixed before the company’s requests were approved.

The electricity generated is sold by the solar panel owners to Georgia Power.