Neighbor looking at Solar Farm

[Travlr]

There's a dairy down the road that has installed a massive amount of solar panels in the last couple of years. I'd say at least a couple hundred acres so far and more every time I look.

The thing that I don't understand is why the good soil beneath isn't being used. The panels are probably six or eight feet in the air. Why aren't they grazing sheep beneath, or even cultivating some kind of short crop? Seems very wasteful to me.

 

[cowgirl8]

There's a dairy down the road that has installed a massive amount of solar panels in the last couple of years. I'd say at least a couple hundred acres so far and more every time I look.

The thing that I don't understand is why the good soil beneath isn't being used. The panels are probably six or eight feet in the air. Why aren't they grazing sheep beneath, or even cultivating some kind of short crop? Seems very wasteful to me.

Wires. There is another company around us that did put sheep on it. I dont think it worked out. The larger one is going to be 18,000 acres and the number of sheep it would take is probably unreachable for a long time. We're working with them to help come up with a solution other than just shredding. Something will have to be done. The land about to be developed, the land we baled last year, they are spraying and seeding. Not sure if we're going to bale it this year. They told us we have it but will have to work around the construction. But heck, they sprayed the weeds..... we just need rain.

 

[Brute 23]

We had a solar company approach us. When my dad started asking the tough questions they got kind of rude and made a comment about them just paneling around those who dont want to participate. We don't have that many surface acres in the area compared to what they wanted and the land guy knew that.

The ridiculous part is they wanted to prevent all o&g drilling or any other kind of mining, etc on that area for the entire term. The guy got his heart broke when he realized we control most the mineral acres.

I told my dad it sound like they will be buying a solar lease and an o&g lease if they want this land. That's pretty balls-ee on their part to demand all that. They pay decent money but not that good.

 

[simme]

When land is leased for solar panels, how many years are typical for the lease? At the end of the lease (or useful life of the panels), do they remove the panels and equipment? Or leave them for the landowner to deal with?

 

[CowboyRam]

What if they go belly up before the end of the lease. What happens then. I would think one would need a certain amount of money in an escrow account just in case.

 

[Brute 23]

When land is leased for solar panels, how many years are typical for the lease? At the end of the lease (or useful life of the panels), do they remove the panels and equipment? Or leave them for the landowner to deal with?

When they approached us they wanted like a 3-5yr option. Then, if the exercised it, there would be a 30yr term lease.

When you make a lease always make the company put money in escrow to cover damages or clean up just in case. Most of these companies are foreign backed with good ol boy fronts. They will even use locals to push on their behalf to drive that home.

 

[RDFF]

Brute is right on all counts. I was on the community advisory board for a wind project that was attempted here. Our sole purpose was to have community individuals on that advisory board to guide the project and help to ensure that we ended up with a "good" project in the end. We worked to incorporate language into the lease agreement that helped to safeguard the community at large and the project participants, including if the project should fail or go bankrupt after years of being in service. ALWAYS make sure that there is a security bond in place to cover demolition, removal, and reclamation/restoration (and realize that it will never be the same as it was before that project was installed even after this process). These projects change hands so many times by the time they're due to be sunsetted that you can't possibly at signing know who you'll be dealing with at that point.

Lots of very long term angles to have to think about, that's for sure. I used to feel, when I was working "for the company/community" that they'd never abandon these things... what with the amount and cost of all the in the ground infrastructure that they would already have in place..., they'd just automatically renew that lease (a right which they ALWAYS have written into the contracts... 100 year renewal option leases are common), and "repower" them with new turbines/panels. Well now, 15 years later, I'm hearing of similar projects across the country... only maybe 20 years old, where the company owning the project at that time has filed for bankruptcy, with no bond in place, and there sit the turbines on the property owners land... end of story for the project "owner". Imagine signing a lease in 1920..., for a contract that extended all the way up to today............................ How could you possibly have seen what you would need to be concerned about in today's energy atmosphere? You're signing away the rights to energy production (and as some have mentioned... potentially including multiple forms of energy capture on your property)... not only for today, but for a very long term into the future.

I can tell you that the majority of those who signed leases (which were typically 100 year "renewable rights" leases back when these projects were going gangbusters here), would say they probably wouldn't do it again. If you were one of the "early projects"... you typically would get a "boiler plate lease"... no compromising on the language terms. As the signing of properties process matured, the language of the leases became "more competitive" between companies vying for the land... and the landowners became more saavy to the multiple "potential pitfalls" that one could encounter. The "early leases" were the guinea pigs for those that would follow. Valuation of land lease payments became much more competitive too. But be wary of even that............ they may be trying to buy you off on language that you might really NEED to have in that lease, that they don't really want to have to give you.

In the end, be cautious..., be skeptical..., be your own strongest advocate..., but realize too that if you don't "participate" if and when they finally DO come through and surround you....................... you're likely going to be the one property that will get passed by.... and you WON'T necessarily have another opportunity to participate later (and that's OK, if you're OK with that). When they design these projects, they design them with what land leases they have signed at the time, and the transmission capability is designed for THAT PROJECT, with that amount of production capability. They're not going to spend alot of extra $$$ on a larger transmission capability, hoping that in 15 years they can come back with all their costly construction equipment and more costly PUC applications, to place more harvesting capabilities onto land that they passed by in the initial build phase. That's not how it works. You're small acreage (in the big picture) isn't worth coming back to in order to "harvest" it... it'll be like a corner of a cornfield that you left, and you've already moved 500 miles down the road to a 10,000 acre field. They'll have moved on to "greener pastures", where they can build another mega-project.... rather than having to build a small area project around your "passed by property", just to fill in a few holes. You're not important enough at that point to warrant their interest. You will no longer matter enough to them.

One thing that I really liked, that we had gotten written into the leases we worked on, as far as an escalator, was that we were able to get the lease payments tied to the CPI (consumer price index)... and often, the inflation rate for goods and services will run higher than will the inflation rate for energy, and historically, particularly for electricity per KWH. That having been said, IF we get as many electric cars produced and sold as the current trends and government regulations AND SUBSIDY PROGRAMS are pushing us toward...... I expect electricity costs to dramatically increase... and probably at a faster rate than the overal CPI! Why? Because we will never be able to deliver as much energy across our failing electricity infrastructure as we do currently through our network of pipelines and tanker trucks, to all the fueling stations across our nation! So that's going to mean MASSIVE upgrades being REQUIRED to our national electric transmission system.... upgrades that will cost many, many, many billions of $$$. That "cost" will automatically be passed on to the taxpayers, and the rate payers.... a "tax" for electric vehicle use (to be paid even by those who choose NOT to drive electric vehicles)............... even though in most cases it won't be called a "tax" directly. We're already reeling headlong toward that inevitable "crisis" right now...

At this point, no-one on the legislative side even wants to discuss this "direct cost issue" inseparably connected with electric vehicle use... and it's only ONE of the major pitfalls associated with them... but it perhaps will be the MOST COSTLY one, IMO. There's obviously environmental concerns with the batteries..., and with HOW we would go about generating that much electricity in the first place..., etc. But even if we had plenty of nuclear power generation to supply that much electric energy..... our electric grid simply can't deliver that much energy to the places that people will NEED to be "fueling up at".... which essentially is everywhere across the whole nation.... just like we do currently with petroleum fuels.

 

[RDFF]

The Biden Administration Force Feeds Electric Vehicles

 

[GoWyo]

On wind and solar leases there are numerous issues that a landowner needs to protect against.
1. Set a minimum floor price for their lease in the event that your land is burdened by infrastructure such as power lines but maybe minimal turbines or solar panels. Don't let them use your land for free for any infrastructure. Tie the minimum floor amount to CPI. The minimum floor ensures you have income even if their turbines quit working...it should be set higher than the likely minimum royalty generated.
2. Make them pay a separate high fee for substations and similar infrastructure.
3. Make sure the lease requires a bond or some mechanism to fund the removal of the turbines or panels. They usually won't agree to establish a bond until 10-15 years in to the lease because they have to find the initial construction. Be tough on this. This is an area where states should legislate some general laws to ensure funding is available to remove and reclaim land.
4. The reclamation provision needs to specify that it survives after the lease expires.
5. Require any assignee of the lease to have sufficient assets and financial soundness to operate the project. You don't want them to assign the project to a shell company at the end of life and leave you with a mess and no bond to remove/reclaim.
There are a lot of other things too. These leases are 40-50 pages long. Hire an attorney with some experience reviewing these documents. They are a lot to digest if you haven't been through the process before. I have reviewed and negotiated about a dozen wind and solar leases in Wyoming. Don't sign anything until you consult legal counsel.

 

[Brute 23]

In O&G the company has to get a permit from the RRC to operate wells. They also have different bond amounts based on how many wells they have that has to be put up to secure the permit. Should the company go belly up the RRC can go after assets and owners of the company for clean up and P&A expenses in addition to the bond.

These solar and wind projects are pretty deregulated. The is no governing entity overseeing it. If things go south there will be a heck of a mess.

 

[Brute 23]

When we do O&G leases, there is a no assignment clause. The wells can not be turned over to another company with out us signing off.

I would do the same with wind and solar. It will likely be a deal breaker but it will protect you. Especially right now when there are so many people securing leases to then resell.

 

[50/50Farms]

I completely disagree with the sentiment regarding toeing the line so you're not the only one in the area on the train. We've got a good sized place down in the coal hills that the company men can kiss my you know what on. They've never touched it and never will, and the one time we thought we might lose it I made it plain that nobody will ever come in and crank a machine on that place that I don't want and live through the day to tell about it. If I won the lottery, amongst other things I would buy up four tracts, they are the four big tracts that are currently for sale and have been for sale for ten years and they are preventing my hometown from blooming out further. I will do anything to be a thorn in the side of progress, I am a curmudgeonly son of a beech in terms of growth. I will be a burr under every saddle I can until they put me to bed with a pick and a shovel.

 

[Stonewall Joe]

One, they will be the quietest neighbors you'll ever have. Two, dont expect things to stay the same if you dont own the land. Three, you might could sell to the solar farm, they pay good prices.. Or heck, lease your land to them, and buy somewhere else. The worst mistake people make when this happens to their area is to refuse to work with them. Its going to happen no matter what you do. And you dont want to be that one person who did not lease or sell. Its just how it is. Do you know the company?

it' impossible to fight it all despite the will to do it, we have a distant cousin back in Cape Girardeau who refused to sell his old house and an acre or so and now they are actually surrounded by a shopping center and the place sits in a bit of a hole since the land around them was raised. I feel bad for them, I understand wanting to keep the "home place" but then I look at where they are living and I'm not sure they're happy about it

 

[Dusty Britches]

The cemetery that shares our fence is the quietest neighbors around. I fear the day when they get rowdy.

 

[RDFF]

On wind and solar leases there are numerous issues that a landowner needs to protect against.
1. Set a minimum floor price for their lease in the event that your land is burdened by infrastructure such as power lines but maybe minimal turbines or solar panels. Don't let them use your land for free for any infrastructure. Tie the minimum floor amount to CPI. The minimum floor ensures you have income even if their turbines quit working...it should be set higher than the likely minimum royalty generated.
2. Make them pay a separate high fee for substations and similar infrastructure.
3. Make sure the lease requires a bond or some mechanism to fund the removal of the turbines or panels. They usually won't agree to establish a bond until 10-15 years in to the lease because they have to find the initial construction. Be tough on this. This is an area where states should legislate some general laws to ensure funding is available to remove and reclaim land.
4. The reclamation provision needs to specify that it survives after the lease expires.
5. Require any assignee of the lease to have sufficient assets and financial soundness to operate the project. You don't want them to assign the project to a shell company at the end of life and leave you with a mess and no bond to remove/reclaim.
There are a lot of other things too. These leases are 40-50 pages long. Hire an attorney with some experience reviewing these documents. They are a lot to digest if you haven't been through the process before. I have reviewed and negotiated about a dozen wind and solar leases in Wyoming. Don't sign anything until you consult legal counsel.

GoWyo is right on the money. These leases ARE complicated... and you have to remember that unless there's someone pushing those writing the terms incorporated into those leases, they are being written ENTIRELY by the developer, for the developer's benefit. THAT'S why you need to work with your own attorney. If it's a community project (meaning involving more than one landowner), those landowners CAN work together with one attorney (and I DO feel this is a good practice, because he will likely be MORE familiar with the lease that way... because he hears the concerns of ALL of the landowners), but remember that you are always free to hire your own attorney in addition to that "joint community representation" too. The more eyes you have examining that lease, the more likely you are to find "potential flaws" that need improvement.

Take this stuff very seriously... it's a long term lease.... longer than your own lifespan in most cases. An attorney can only tell you what it is that you're signing on for... and work on your behalf to advise you about potential pitfalls, and to achieve a more favorable lease to the landowner.

 

[RDFF]

The other thing to remember is that as an individual landowner, in a large multiple landowner project... you have VERY little leverage to try to get the leasing company to accommodate desired changes. However, if you all, as a group, work together to achieve more landowner-beneficial changes, you then command considerable power to achieve them.

The difficulty in this then is that YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO WORK TOGETHER AS A GROUP! All in... together, making decisions that will apply to all of the land represented by the group. This is a personal choice then, to bow to the will of the group, in regard to the lease language.

We were able to get a clause written into our lease that if the terms (like payments for example) into the future got changed for a "better deal", in order to bring in some remaining "hold-out properties"............ then those same terms would have to be offered and apply retroactively to those properties that signed into the project early on (early signers would still have to individually agree to and sign off on those changes to the terms of course, and would have the right to reject those terms, if they so chose). Everybody in the project gets the same deal... no bad feelings in the community because of "preferential treatment".

There are so many things that we were able to accomplish in terms of changing that lease language for the benefit of the landowners... it's hard to know where to begin! We (the members of the advisory board) worked hard on that lease trying our best to get it written to protect and benefit landowners, and honestly, we absolutely did end up with what is still the best, most comprehensive landowner friendly lease language that I've ever seen on a wind project. However, in the end, the project still failed to move forward because we still couldn't get enough contiguous properties signed in to make the project feasible. THAT was mostly because of the "anti-wind activists", both from within the footprint and from outside of it, and those from within the footprint consisting primarily of "non-ag residences in the ag district", that didn't have a large enough tract to be eligible to participate (setbacks from residences) vehemently objecting... almost to the point of violently objecting..., and then some of the ag landowners that had land that was eligible not wanting to "upset the community" by going along with the project. So the non-ag residence objector's tantrums to protect their residential property values in an ag protection district worked as planned (and I agree that it is legitimately "debatable" whether solar and wind is or should be considered an agricultural venture.................. however ALL we do is "grow energy" in one form or another out here... half our corn crop is sold currently into the ethanol market, our soybeans go to biodiesel, etc......., and of course, food of any type, for any creature, IS energy). As a result, there are NO windmills in our entire county, anywhere. Many would say that's OK... and I "might" agree, looking at it all now 10 years later.

That being said, the two counties just 2 miles away from my farm have them all over the place, and they ARE benefiting in a large way, from a tax generation basis. I see hundreds of red blinking lights across the night skyscape from my place, and the windfarm projects continue westward from here all across southern Minnesota. Some of these installations are 20+ years old... the newest ones are probably approaching 10 years old now. NONE of the "health concerns" that are always and constantly being raised in objection have materialized locally to my knowledge at all. THAT concern, in reality, just doesn't exist "broadly" (I'm not saying that there isn't "someone" that may have been affected somehow, for example like the suggestion that an epileptic child may potentially have some impacts... I'm just not aware of any legitimate cases that have been made publicly and have been verified as fact to date in Minnesota or Iowa). The aesthetic objection is a personal preference thing, and so that CAN have "some merit"... IMO. The "noise" issue... may have some merit... as can the "flicker" issue... both of these are mostly related to the proper siting of the turbines themself. There are good projects and bad out there... and it is these kinds of things that our advisory board was responsible for ferreting out and working on, to "get it right". Potential for aerial application issues, air medivac concerns, potential TV and GPS guidance interference concerns, balance of payments issues (spreading payments out to ALL the landowners in the area equitably... even if you didn't necessarily get a turbine sited on your property), payments for roads, and transmission lines, be they underground or overhead, etc., what can and can't a landowner do with the property (like building a tall grain leg, shelterbelts, etc.), and within a specified distance of a turbine, etc. SOOOOOOOOOOOO many things that we addressed!

ALL of those first wind projects that went up ONLY got the developer's "boiler plate lease language"... take it or leave it............. ALL specifically written by, and for the benefit of the developer, and with only HIS concerns in mind. Our project was initiated about 10 years after those first projects went in up here... and landowners were becoming much better informed about what these leases contained and their potential impacts. I would very strongly recommend that you insist that the company that is intending to develop in your area include an advisory panel of local residents in ALL of their planning meetings for the project, and that they be allowed to have input to help to "steer" that project. Some things just won't be feasible to accomplish obviously... and if you unrealistically push too hard or ask for too much, the developer is going to pack up his ball and bat and go home..................but ALOT CAN BE accomplished to make those leases more palatable to the landowners as well.

If the landowners aren't working together as a community though, you'll not have the leverage to accomplish these kinds of things.

 

[BFE]

I don't know much, but when old oil wells play out they normally get sold to a dummy corp. There they sit. You know which ones they are, the delinquent tax list is full of them. Wouldn't surprise me if the same thing happens with the solar farms.

 

[RDFF]

I don't know much, but when old oil wells play out they normally get sold to a dummy corp. There they sit. You know which ones they are, the delinquent tax list is full of them. Wouldn't surprise me if the same thing happens with the solar farms.

But think about when those original leases got signed... were the landowners savvy enough to forsee far enough into the future to see that they'd have to protect themself from this kind of thing in the lease language? Probably not. The industry was still just developing... just like the leases evolve in wind and solar. THAT'S why you need a security bond that survives the perpetuity of the project in place as a REQUIRED part of the lease language. Proper language and protections in the lease will tend to separate the men from the boys between the competing development companies.

 

[Brute 23]

On oil and gas leases put language that says we can take ownership of the surface equipment, pad material, etc when then lease expires. That gives you the option to have it cleaned up or sold off. With out that wording, your are at the mercy of the RRC proceedings which can take forever, or never.

Leases on the O&G side have greatly evolved in recent years. A lot of it is applicable to renewables, there is no need to go back in time.

 

[cowgirl8]

Our lease is 25 years with the option of 50. They do pull up the panels when done.