Construction of the Acciona solar project is nearing completion and officials said it should be finished by spring.
Union County Administrator Bill Narducci updated the commissioners Wednesday on the company’s Union Solar project, which began construction more than a year ago.
Narducci said he recently met with Brian Dunnebeck, development manager with Acciona, who said the project is over 90% complete as of the start of the year.
“The update that he provided shows they’re, overall, about 92% complete with construction of the project and the majority of that, 80%, is testing and commissioning,” he said. “According to him, modules are up and all of that, so basically the visual is complete and now they’re in the process of testing and then connection to the substation and then to the grid.”
The project spans more than 3,000 acres across Washington and York townships with a substation near the intersection of Treaty Line Road and Hoover-Moffitt Road. That location puts it next to the Marysville-Southwest Lima 345kV connection line, allowing it to tap immediately into the electrical grid.
The entire project runs north to south between Byhalia and York Center, along parts of Routes 31 and 47.
With construction nearly completed and testing already in place, Narducci said the project is still on track to finish this quarter or by the end of March or April, as projected.
He said he traveled the project site this week with other county officials and the trip reiterated the need to push conversations around project fencing.
“We continue to have conversations on the fencing,” he said. “It was surprising to me, when you see pictures of the fencing, and I guess I agree with Commissioner (Dave) Burke, with what he said previously, the fencing actually makes the project look worse.”
In August, after hearing complaints from residents, the county contacted Acciona about the fencing issues, saying the company wasn’t building them according to the agreement between the two entities. The project grounds have fences with large wooden posts and county officials maintain a “simple wooden fence” was not what was discussed.
Approval for those barriers comes from the Ohio Power Siting Board and at the time of the complaints, Narducci said the board hadn’t decided on the fencing. A decision later came in September from the OPSB stating the board did approve the existing structure.
Narducci then said while the county may not have much leverage with the OPSB approval, officials are hoping to work the issues out between the county and Acciona. He said officials had previously been receptive in conversation and sees the cooperation as continuing the company’s goal to be god neighbor.
In addition to fencing, the project will have a natural barrier of vegetation around the properties in the form of trees and shrubs. Narducci said that screening is also in place but not yet grown enough to be effective.
“Now, the screening has been performed and right now, it’s very immature so obviously the hope is, as that matures, it changes and looks better,” he said. “There are some spots where it looks okay, but there are some other spots where, close to the road, that fencing architecture, that’s a concern of mine.”
He said conversations will continue with the company and the plan is to first finish the screening process and then revisit the fencing after that’s completed.
“It’s going to take a number of years for it to look as the renderings show,” Narducci said. “Which, again, it’s not unusual with development. We got those complaints all the time when I was in the engineer’s office about landscape planning, but still, with the scale of a project like this, it just emphasizes it.”