Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council votes Thursday on a zoning amendment that would permit utility-scale solar on up to 1% of Fayette County’s land area – including agricultural zones – provided projects incorporate active farming beneath the arrays. The measure represents the first major land-use policy shift in central Kentucky to explicitly link large-scale renewable deployment with agricultural preservation, and its outcome will signal whether agrivoltaics can move from pilot projects to a standard development model in the Southeast.
What the ZOTA Proposes and Why Land-Use Politics Made It Necessary
The zoning ordinance text amendment (ZOTA) before the council would create a new conditional-use pathway for solar facilities exceeding 20 megawatts on land zoned Agricultural-Rural (A-R) and Agricultural-Urban (A-U), which together cover roughly 180,000 acres of Fayette County’s 184,000-acre total. The 1% cap – approximately 1,840 acres – translates to roughly 200-300 MW of nameplate capacity at current utility-scale densities of 7-9 acres per MWdc. Projects would require a conditional-use permit, a decommissioning bond, and, critically, an approved agrivoltaic management plan demonstrating continued agricultural production – grazing, pollinator habitat, specialty crops, or hay – throughout the project’s operational life.
Lexington’s existing zoning code effectively blocks utility-scale solar on agricultural land by limiting ground-mounted arrays to accessory-use status tied to on-site consumption. That restriction forced developers toward neighboring counties with friendlier ordinances, leaving Fayette County unable to capture property-tax revenue or direct procurement benefits from projects its own utilities and corporate buyers want. The ZOTA emerged from a year-long stakeholder process convened by the city’s Division of Planning, which included Kentucky Utilities, LG&E, the Kentucky Solar Energy Society, the Fayette County Farm Bureau, and the University of Kentucky’s College of Agriculture. The agrivoltaic mandate was the compromise that brought the Farm Bureau to the table: it preserves the county’s “rural character” designation – a planning priority since the 1996 Purchase of Development Rights program – while unlocking a revenue stream for landowners facing declining tobacco and commodity-crop margins.
Fayette County’s 2022 greenhouse-gas inventory shows the community emits roughly 3.2 million metric tons CO₂e annually, with electricity generation accounting for 42%. The city’s adopted climate action plan targets a 40% reduction by 2030 and net-zero by 2050. Even at the ZOTA’s maximum build-out, local solar would cover only 5-7% of current annual electricity demand – but it would provide the first utility-scale renewable electrons physically interconnected within the Lexington-Fayette grid, reducing transmission congestion costs that currently add $3-5/MWh to wholesale power prices for Kentucky Utilities customers.
Why Agrivoltaics Is the Linchpin for Solar Expansion in the Southeast
The Southeast has lagged the Southwest and Midwest in utility-scale solar deployment per capita, not for lack of irradiance – Kentucky averages 4.5 peak-sun-hours daily, within 10% of Indiana – but because land-use conflicts intensify where prime farmland abuts growing metros. Agrivoltaics changes the political calculus: it reframes solar from a “loss of farmland” to a “dual-use investment.” Research from the University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2 and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s InSPIRE project shows that properly designed agrivoltaic systems can maintain 60-80% of baseline crop yield for shade-tolerant varieties while reducing irrigation demand by 15-30% through reduced evapotranspiration. For Kentucky’s dominant cattle-hay operations, grazing trials at the UK Research and Education Center in Princeton have demonstrated no statistically significant difference in forage quality or animal weight gain under fixed-tilt arrays raised to 48-inch minimum clearance.
That points to a replicable model: if Lexington’s ZOTA passes, it becomes the first county in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) footprint to codify agrivoltaics as a permitting requirement rather than a voluntary add-on. TVA’s 2023 Integrated Resource Plan calls for 10 GW of new solar by 2035; its current interconnection queue holds 14 GW of solar-plus-storage projects, but siting delays average 18-24 months in Kentucky versus 10-12 months in Tennessee. Standardizing agrivoltaic design criteria – row spacing, module height, vegetation management plans – could compress that timeline by giving planning commissions a clear, defensible checklist. By comparison, Virginia’s 2021 “solar on agricultural land” statute (SB 542) lacks a dual-use mandate, and several counties have since imposed moratoria citing farmland loss. Lexington’s approach, if it survives legal challenge, could become the template for TVA-region counties seeking to unlock queue capacity without triggering backlash.
The cost implication is non-trivial. Agrivoltaic racking adds roughly $0.05-$0.08/Wdc versus standard single-axis trackers, and wider row spacing reduces DC capacity per acre by 15-20%. On a 100 MW project, that’s $5-8 million in incremental capex and 15-20 fewer MW on the same land. But the trade-off buys something developers in the Southeast rarely get: political durability. Projects that survive permitting without litigation avoid the $200,000-$500,000 in legal fees and 12-18 month delays that have become routine for contested solar farms in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. If the ZOTA establishes a “by-right conditional use” pathway with clear agrivoltaic standards, the net present value of avoided delay risk likely exceeds the hardware premium for any project over 50 MW.
Who This Affects
- Utility planners (Kentucky Utilities / LG&E): Gain a local, dispatchable renewable resource that reduces reliance on TVA transmission imports and provides a hedge against rising capacity prices in the PJM fringe – current KYUC capacity costs run $45-$55/MW-day versus $30-$35 for solar-plus-storage PPAs.
- Solar developers and EPCs: Get a defined, repeatable permitting pathway in a county with high load density and willing offtakers; the 1% cap creates a near-term pipeline of 200-300 MW, enough to justify a regional supply-chain hub for agrivoltaic racking and vegetation management.
- Landowners and farm operators: Access a new revenue stream – typical solar lease rates in Kentucky run $800-$1,200/acre/year – while retaining agricultural production and qualifying for USDA conservation programs that stack with lease payments.
- Policy analysts and state legislators: Receive a live test case for whether mandatory agrivoltaics can resolve the farmland-versus-solar deadlock that has stalled renewable legislation in Frankfort for three sessions.
What to Watch Next
- Council vote and any amendments: A simple majority (8 of 15) passes the ZOTA; watch for last-minute changes to the 1% cap, the agrivoltaic definition, or decommissioning bond amounts that could signal compromise or poison-pill tactics.
- First conditional-use applications: If passed, track how many developers file within 90 days and whether the Planning Commission applies the agrivoltaic standards consistently – inconsistency would invite equal-protection challenges.
- TVA interconnection queue movement: Monitor whether projects citing the Lexington ZOTA receive accelerated study timelines; TVA’s cluster study process currently batches Kentucky projects annually.
- Legal challenges: The Kentucky Farm Bureau’s state affiliate has opposed mandatory agrivoltaics in prior testimony; a lawsuit claiming the ZOTA constitutes a regulatory taking or exceeds home-rule authority would test the ordinance’s durability.
Bottom line: Lexington’s ZOTA is a litmus test for whether the Southeast can translate agrivoltaics from academic promise into permitting reality – and whether a 1% land-use carve-out can unlock enough solar to matter for both climate targets and ratepayer bills without fracturing the rural coalition that controls local politics.
Read the full report at CleanTechnica
Note: facts and figures attributed above to reflect that outlet's original reporting. Broader context, cross-sector connections, and forward-looking scenarios reflect independent analysis by our editorial team.
About this article: Drafted by Energy Ai with AI-assisted research and writing based on public reporting, then reviewed under our editorial process before publication.
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