The Ohio Power Siting Board approved applications filed by Clearview Solar I, a unit of Open Road Renewables, and Ross County Solar, a unit of National Grid Renewables, to build utility-scale solar facilities in Champaign and Ross counties, respectively.
The 144 MW Clearview Solar project is set to occupy around 1,075 acres of a roughly 1,195-acre project area located in Champaign County, west of Columbus. The hardware is subject to change, but the preliminary site plan was modeled using First Solar’s Series 6 Plus modules, Nextracker NX Gemini single-axis trackers, and SMA America’s Sunny Central 4600 inverters. Construction is expected to begin late this year and take about 12 months.
The 120 MW Ross County Solar project is set to occupy roughly 927 acres within a roughly 1,433-acre project south of Columbus. The project application does not include what specific manufacturers the developers intend to use. It said that the project will consist of around 365,000 monocrystalline bifacial PV panels, mounted on single-axis trackers.
The application also lfets open the possibility of using either polycrystalline or thin film modules. Construction is expected to begin as early as the fourth quarter with commercial operations beginning as early as the fourth quarter of 2022.
These two projects add to the surge of utility-scale solar applications and approvals in Ohio. The state ranked 23rd in the nation in terms of installed capacity at the end of Q2 2021, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). With roughly 797 MW installed to date, Ohio is one of the states SEIA said it anticipates to have an especially bright solar future. The trade group projected 5,596 MW of new capacity over the next five years, good for sixth-most in the nation.
