Solar farms could produce clean energy in the future, but at what environmental cost?

An unnamed developer is currently seeking a deal with Horry County officials to build five solar farms in the county in coming months, aiming to break ground in mid-2021.

The developer is seeking to build the solar farms across five properties in three separate locations in western Horry County, supplying the county with power for hundreds of homes.

The potential deal could net the county up to $16.6 million over 30 years, funds that some County Council members say could go toward a recreation center in western, rural Horry County.

Altogether, the solar farms could generate up to 138 megawatts of power annually.

But a big question remains: What to do with the solar panels when they become obsolete? By current industry standards, most solar panels are built to function for 30 years, on average. But some council members said they worry that the materials contained in the solar panels, once the panels are disposed of, could one day have detrimental environmental effects in Horry County or elsewhere.

“There’s not a landfill in the country that will take these things,” County Council member Johnny Vaught said at a recent council meeting. “The financial thing looks really good, it looks really nice, but I’m thinking about my grandchildren and children down the road, where are these materials going to go when they’re done with them?”

County administrators are hoping to bring an engineer before councilors to explain how the proposed solar farm could be decommissioned in the future. The engineer was scheduled to speak to councilors at Thursday’s Transportation and Economic Development committee meeting, but will instead speak at that committee’s next meeting Oct. 13.

Even though the potential deal would require the yet-unnamed developer to pay for any clean-up of the site and removal of the solar panels, some council members said the environmental concerns outweigh those terms.

The specifics of the proposal break down like this:

▪ The company building the solar farm will use the five privately-owned properties in western Horry County for up to 30 years and construct a solar farm that will sell the electricity generated to a local provider, likely Santee Cooper.

▪ In exchange for a tax break on the development, the company will pay the county $552,000 per year, and will be responsible for all deconstruction or demolition costs.

Other details, such as the name of the company, the address of the proposed site and the name of the current property owner have not been made public due . County spokesperson Kelly Moore declined to answer specific questions about the deal. And Barry Spivey, an assistant county administrator who’s working on the deal, declined a request for an interview.

At a public meeting on Aug. 25, though, Spivey argued that the county could lose money in the long run if it doesn’t agree to this deal. Santee Cooper, he said, could build its own solar farms to generate electricity in the county and would only owe the county regular taxes.

“For us, if (solar farms are) going to be here one way or the other, we’re much more enriched in this type of arrangement than allowing Santee Cooper to develop it themselves,” he told the Administration Committee.

You scratch my back ...

Council member Al Allen, who represents the area where developers would build the solar farm, said he could be convinced to vote for the deal if the annual payments from the project were spent exclusively in his district — a carrot on a stick, as he described it.

“If this council were to allow all that funding to go to a worthy project inside District 11, would that be more meaningful ... for the future citizens and Horry County?” he asked. But, he added, “Sometimes, in stuff with money, that carrot on a stick may be good for the moment but it’s not good for long term.”

Still, councilors have said they were either wholly opposed to the project, or had serious concerns about it, due to the potential environmental contamination from the solar panels once they’re no longer in use.

“The minuses exceed the pluses,” said Council member Gary Loftus, who represents southern Myrtle Beach. “We got ocean breezes that we could put big propellers up there, and do the same thing. Why we’re messing with this stuff is beyond me.”

Recent research, though, may assuage the concerns Loftus, Vaught and other council members have raised at recent debates on the proposal. In a series of reports from October 2018 to May 2020, researchers studied how solar panels catching fire, breaking, and sitting in a landfill could affect human health and found minimal risks. The research was produced by scientists working with the International Energy Agency’s Technology Collaboration Program on Photovoltaic Power Systems, a group that studies solar panels and their use around the world, among other issues.

In all three studies, researchers assessed worst case scenarios for solar panels exposed to fire, breakage and storage in a landfill and studied the degree to which several representative chemicals — lead, cadmium and selenium — could leech into soil or groundwater. For each, researcher Garvin Heath said, the potential harms were minimal, meaning they didn’t reach the threshold of concern according to U.S. health standards.

In fact, Heath said, when he and the other researchers assessed the affects of solar panels in landfills, they assumed the landfill did not have a protective lining underneath it, a practice that is illegal in the United States. That means solar panels pose even less risk in U.S. landfills than the research showed.

“Even under this worst case scenario, that would be illegal in South Carolina and elsewhere in the U.S., we did not find a significant risk,” he said.

Heath added that at least six companies in the United States now recycle broken or unusable solar panels. The trade group Solar Energy Industries Association currently runs a program connecting its members in the solar industry with companies that handle recycling.

Despite the environmental concerns, the “carrot” pitched by Allen — to spend the money from the developer on a recreation center in his district, likely near Aynor — could garner enough council support to approve the deal. Councilman Cam Crawford, who represents the Socastee area, said Thursday he’s willing to vote for the deal if the money can help the county build a recreation center.

Council member W. Paul Prince, who represents Longs, Lorris and other parts of eastern Horry County, sounded a cautious tone as council moves forward in discussions about the project.

“I’m not saying we should not do it but we should really, really get more knowledgeable about it and how we go about allowing them to do it,” he said. “I don’t believe we just jump out and do it.”

This story was originally published September 11, 2020 at 11:37 AM.