en.Wedoany.com Reported - The Ohio Supreme Court has revoked the permit previously issued for the Oak Run solar project in Madison County, which was originally planned to become the largest solar installation in the state's history. The court's majority opinion held that the project's permit application did not fully meet the submission requirements of the Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB).
The project, developed by Savion Renewable Energy, a subsidiary of oil and gas giant Shell, spans 6,000 acres and was originally intended to provide approximately 800 megawatts of renewable energy to Ohio. According to site officials, the facility was also equipped with 300 megawatts of battery storage capacity.
In the final majority opinion for the case, Judge Pat Fischer stated that Oak Run failed to meet the rules because the project did not provide any photo simulations or schematic diagrams from the public's perspective showing the support structures for substations, which could be the tallest features of the project.
Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy partially concurred with Fischer and the majority opinion. The chief justice supported the local government's claim that the project's current developer, Savion, failed to provide information regarding the project's fire safety and water quality impacts. However, she ultimately found the majority's determination that the developer did not provide sufficient information on the project's height to be "arbitrary and unreasonable."
Jennifer Brunner, the only Democratic judge on the seven-member court, also partially dissented from the court's opinion. She stated that the Ohio Power Siting Board "had sufficient information to determine the visual impact of the proposed project." She noted that the record contained adequate descriptions of the proposed major utility facility from numerous public perspectives regarding the intervenor-appellee Oak Run Solar Project, L.L.C. Therefore, she partially agreed and partially disagreed with the court's ruling, advocating for upholding the board's order granting Oak Run's application for a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need to construct the solar power facility.
In this ruling, the court ordered the siting board to more thoroughly address some of the project's visual impact issues. The ruling does not completely terminate the Oak Run solar project, and opportunities remain for solar developers in Ohio and surrounding areas. The Oak Run project presented a unique opportunity for the developer, as the potential site represents one of the largest agrivoltaic projects in the United States. In recent years, solar agricultural practices have become a driving force in the solar industry. Beyond agricultural benefits, this utility-scale project would provide enough electricity for approximately 170,000 Ohio homes and generate $7.2 million in tax revenue for the county over about 35 years. According to the project's initial filing with the Ohio Public Utilities Commission, the project's scale would create over 3,000 construction jobs. The filing, submitted in 2023, also stated that once fully operational, it would create 63 long-term operations and maintenance positions. According to the Associated Press, Republican commissioners from 27 counties have banned solar and wind projects within their jurisdictions.
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