CONWAY — At its third hearing on BlueWave Solar’s plans for a 20-acre solar array on farmland along Roaring Brook Road, the Planning Board responded to frustrated residents and continued the matter to a fourth hearing, by which time members will have reviewed the company’s 202 pages of responses to questions and concerns.
The application for the project on Ronald Boyden’s property describes a 4.99-megawatt system with solar panels set 10 feet above the ground, along with a battery energy storage system, a 20-foot-wide gravel access road and a stormwater basin.
The solar farm would be a dual-use system, allowing landowners to continue using the site for farming, with animals grazing under the panels, which would be spaced with enough room for sunshine to reach the field, according to Melinda Costello, a civil engineer with Weston & Sampson. Instead of fixed panels, the solar panels would move to follow the sun throughout the day.
The energy from the solar array would flow into the local electric grid. Eversource would then purchase the energy through the state’s SMART 3.0 Program, an incentive program for solar power developers.
BlueWave Solar reached out to Boyden as part of its “outreach efforts” to farmers in the state in accordance with the company’s “strong focus on agrivoltaics applications combining clean energy with sustainable farming,” Joel Lindsay, vice president of project development at BlueWave, explained in an email.
Residents voiced concerns with the project, including the safety of the battery energy storage system and the solar array’s impact on the view of Ronald Boyden’s farmland along Route 116, at the first two public hearings. On Monday, BlueWave sent the Planning Board members 202 pages of responses to these questions and concerns.
Planning Board members and residents will have a chance to catch up on the responses, and voice their thoughts and questions, at the next hearing on Tuesday, June 23, at 7 p.m.
Before then, the Planning Board members expressed their initial concerns with the updates on Tuesday.
Planning Board member Jeff Lacy requested that the developer change the existing buffer in the designs to “a robust 30-foot-thick buffer” between the array and abutting properties.
The developer’s response describes a 30-foot buffer along only the northern boundary of the project. No mention was made about the other buffers. According to Planning Board Chair George Forcier, the original plans for the project included a single line of plantings along this northern boundary.
“I want a buffer that’s going to work quickly and not wait years and years and years to mature until everybody’s old,” Lacy said. “We should do the screening strategically, so it’s put where it really works, and where it really works, you put it in well.”
Forcier mentioned a letter he received from a new homeowner in town expressing concern about the solar array impacting their view.
“Screening seems to be an important question for people in many different ways, so we need to think about how that can be done in a more robust way,” Forcier said.
Costello encouraged board members to take a closer look at BlueWave’s responses, adding that the revised plans “enhanced” the screening with landscaping that complies with the town’s bylaw for solar facilities, which requires that “large-scale solar facilities” include a 30-foot screen of native trees and shrubs.
The bylaw for commercial solar photovoltaic systems also requires that the systems sit on slopes with grades of less than 15%. On Tuesday, Costello and the Planning Board members realized they determined the slope of the proposed solar array through different calculations, leading Costello to claim that the “foundation points” of the array sit on slopes between 5% and 10%, while Lacy and Forcier said the proposed array rests on slopes above 15%.
Lacy and Forcier also expressed concerns over BlueWave’s plans for the battery energy storage system, with Lacy claiming it “seems to be out in the middle of things and highly visible.” Lacy said he would prefer the system be installed behind a barn on the property.
Forcier called for “solid, attributable information” about the safety of the SolBank 3.0 battery energy storage model being proposed. In response, Costello said the developer’s updates outline the federal and state safety standards in place regulating the installation of battery energy storage systems.
After the Planning Board members and BlueWave team settled on a plan for the June 23 hearing, former Planning Board member Mary McClintock voiced frustration with what she described as BlueWave’s delay in sharing information that should have been included in the original application for the project.
“This feels like we’ve been playing catch-up since day one,” McClintock said. “It feels very weird to me to be having public hearing after public hearing with inadequate amounts of information and inadequate amounts of time to discuss it. … It doesn’t make me feel good about the applicant, it makes me feel very concerned for the Planning Board having the patience and slogging through all of this in this drawn-out way, and it makes me very frustrated as a member of the public.”
Resident Jack McElaney compared the project to the spread of technology in schools, when “technology knew they had to get in before that was looked at in detail.”
“We’re being rushed, and that’s the strategy, to rush us, so that we don’t have enough information, and you’ve got three days to decide and then it’s done and it’s over, and 15 years later we’re looking back,” McElaney continued.
In response, Planning Board member Cheryl Case said “BlueWave worked hard on coming up with responses to our million questions.”
Forcier also clarified that Costello had asked if the Planning Board members wished to postpone the public hearing to allow more time for them to digest the 202 pages of BlueWave’s responses, but he decided to move forward with the hearing to “keep the process rolling.”
“This process is going to take as long as it takes,” Forcier said. “If it feels like a long drawn-out process, guys, it’s because we’re requesting lots of information and we’re taking the time to review it.”
