Minutes 05-27-2014 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Michael Fox: And, are there any batteries on this site that store energy? Tommy Cleveland: Good question. No, that's— people often feel like, or expect there to be batteries, but there are no batteries. There are really only those two components. There are the panels, and they feed the power directly to the—to the inverter. Michael Fox: That's all we have. Do you have any questions? Okay. Alright, thank you Tommy. And our final witness here this evening is Rich Kirkland. And Rich, if you would come up and affirm that you were sworn, and talk about your credentials. Rich Kirkland: Hi, again my name is Rich Kirkland. I was sworn in. I am a local MAI appraiser coming out of Fuquay. I was um — I've been appraising for about 18 or 19 years now. It starts to run together, but a common bit of what I do—a big part of what I do is land appraisals. I appraise land for subdivision developers, for local environmental groups. Land is a big focus of what I do. Let's see, I'm state certified general, and again I was hired to address the question of whether or not this property is going to have impact on adjoining property values. I was also asked to consider whether or not this was a harmonious use or not. To that end, I have done research through the appraisal institute. I have spoken with three other MAI's about this, other folks who have been researching on this. And, I have found that there really is not a lot of national studies that show any information on this; so I had to go out and do my own. The appraisal institute method for identifying whether or not there is any kind of impact on property value is this idealized thing called matched pair or paired sales analysis. That is where you just look at two properties that have sold, and you want to isolate things down to where there is only one difference, and then you can measure to see if that one difference had anything. So in this case I'm looking for a property that sold next to a solar farm and one that is not next to a solar farm to see if there is anything there. I found a really good — really an ideal set of matched pairs — a series of matched pairs in Goldsboro. The AM Best Solar Farm is adjoining a new development going in. There are new homes being built. Some of the homes are backing up to the solar farm, and some of them are not. They are being sold —the exact same floor plans are being sold for the same price — both backing up to the solar farm, as well as those that are down the street. I spoke with the sales agents about it. They said that they've had no issues or concerns with that. I spoke with the developer. They had no concerns or issues with selling that. And I stopped and I knocked on the doors of some of the folks that bought those homes that back up to the solar farm, and they again said they have no real concerns with it and didn't really care. I have included in my report some pictures of the view from the homes that are there in Goldsboro, and there is also a series of matched pairs. You can see the homes that are selling. There's—This is an image in the yellow. That is the area where the solar farm was put in. Excuse me. And Spring Gardens subdivision is the subdivision where the homes are going in. You can see they are still listing. They are still selling homes out there. It is going to be really to see this, but these are the different home sales I've looked at since the solar farm. I've got different categories where I've looked at them. Some of them are showing homes that sold before the solar farm was announced. I've got some that are showing when it's been announced but not built and then those since they built the solar farm. You can see going through there, especially after the solar farm was announced and built; they are still going for the same prices - and again the same price per square foot. So it is strongly showing that the solar farm itself is having no impact on those home prices, whether it's adjoining or not adjoining through that area.