Agenda - 04-15-2014 - 6a - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

9 1 2 Appraisal Analysis 3 Much lower in height, traffic, noise, light etc. than most other development 4 "Dark at night." 5 Passive Use Harmonizes with Adjacent Uses 6 Establishes certainty of a long term, low intensity use 7 8 Professional Engineers' Affidavits 9 Will not endanger public health or safety 10 Project will meet all codes 11 Project will generate less traffic than one house. 12 No utilities are required or used. 13 14 Solar Farm Meets SUP Conditions 15 Use will maintain or promote the public health, safety and general welfare 16 Use will maintain or enhance the value of contiguous property, and the use is a public 17 necessity 18 Location and character of use are in harmony with area and in compliance with 19 Comprehensive Plan 20 - - - - - - - - 21 Brent Nieman, professional engineer, will speak to some civil engineering issues. Gabe Cantor, 22 PE runs all of our engineering, but he will speak principally to electrical engineering issues. 23 Rich Kirkland, MAI on some evaluation issues, and Mr. Neill you've heard. The schedule of the 24 presentation will be that I will tell you a little bit about Strata Solar; describe a solar electric 25 power plant; describe some similar visual — some uses that we feel like are similar visual 26 impacts; the appraisal analysis; and the engineers will speak and then just briefly touch on the 27 S.U.P. conditions. 28 29 North Carolina is the 5th ranked state in solar energy generation and Strata is the largest 30 developer in North Carolina, and we are actually the 6th largest developer in the nation. We 31 have just completed approximately 50, 5 megawatt farms, and this plant will be a template 5 32 megawatt project that we do. And our goal is to construct another 50 this year; so we are 33 operating 50 of these plants at this point. So we do everything from this point— site acquisition, 34 entitlement. We construct the plants. Of course we design it, get all necessary approvals, and 35 then we own and operate the plants for 20 years or more. 36 37 We create quite a bit of jobs. We have 80 professional staff approximately in Chapel Hill. That 38 includes engineers, project managers, attorneys, accountants, technicians; and we employ 39 anywhere from 500 to 1200 construction staff on about a dozen jobs at one - at any given time. 40 It's about a 3 to 4 month construction cycle, so —and about 100 to 200 people on each job, so 41 we can have quite a bit of employees at any point in time. We average about 1,000 employees 42 over the course of a year in North Carolina. 43 44 This is a typical 5 megawatt farm. This is in Wake County, in Fuquay. That's a 40 or 50 acre 45 project with a 25 acre panel footprint - a typical project. A typical 5 megawatt farm is 30 to 50 46 acres with a 25 acre footprint, approximately 25,000 3 x 5 solar panels fixed on aluminum racks, 47 up to ten feet high, excluding a handful of utility poles that we will install to connect to the 48 existing power lines. We basically do not grade. We will clear trees and use existing land 49 contours, very minimal grading, 4 or 5 ten foot square 100 square foot pads inside the plant that 50 have an inverter and a transformer. And then we will re-plant the project, and at the end of the 51 day the project will have approximately 1 percent impervious surface.