By Brian Shane

Staff Writer

As demand grows for filling fields with solar panels instead of corn or soybeans, Worcester County’s farmers should be on the lookout for aggressive and predatory salespeople in the solar industry, officials said this week.

“It’s almost kind of a David and Goliath situation,” environmental programs director Bob Mitchell told the county’s Board of Commissioners at its Jan. 14 meeting. “These guys and ladies are getting contacted by sales folk from the companies. Some are doing option contracts – there may not be a project in the pipeline, but they want to lock up their land for a time.”

Agricultural lands are now highly profitable for solar development. As a result, county officials plan to mail educational material to eligible landowners, in an effort to help them from being burned by shady sales tactics and questionable contracts.

The trend can be traced to the state’s rising energy demands. Maryland is seeing a surge in popularity of electric vehicles, in full building electrification, and the rise of data centers, Mitchell explained in a Dec. 20 internal county memo.

Not only that, but in just five short years, the state is supposed to be generating 14.5 percent of its energy from solar power, according to the Climate Solutions Now Act of 2022.

As state leaders set increasingly ambitious renewable energy goals, vast farm fields become prime candidates for electricity-churning solar panels, Mitchell said, putting dollar signs in the eyes of solar salesmen.

“Environmental Programs can attest to the aggressive tactics by the solar industry locally and have heard concerns from both the agricultural sector landowners and the members of our county Agricultural Land Preservation Advisory Board,” he wrote in the memo.

Worcester Commissioner Eric Fiori (District 3, Sinepuxent) said he first learned about this issue at the 2024 winter convention of the Maryland Association of Counties. Fiori met colleagues from Caroline County who shared horror stories of landowners who got mixed up with complex solar panel contracts, and how many didn’t realize they gave up their rights in the fine print of a contract.

“What Caroline County has seen is that, farmers are struggling to make ends meet. They look at the solar as a great option to rent their space,” Fiori said in an interview. “Solar is paying them $800 an acre to let rent their ground and they have to do nothing. It allows farmers to make more money off their property without doing any more work, which is wonderful.”

The problem, Fiori said, is that salespeople sometimes leave out ther part where solar panels eventually reach the end of their useful life, and a site needs decommissioning, which can be costly. Also, as property tax assessments rise statewide, solar leases are simply less lucrative.

One solution Caroline adopted was to mail warning notices with red flags about long-term solar lease. It’s a fix Worcester’s leaders say they want to adopt.

Mitchell on Tuesday presented a draft letter to the commissioners, one that could be mailed to property owners whose acreage is ripe for solar. It asks: are you being pressured to sign a contract quickly? Is the solar company reputable? Does signing a lease trigger a breach of your mortgage?

The final notice will be fine-tuned by county staff before going out to landowners with eligible quantities of agricultural acreage.

Commissioner Chip Bertino (District 5, Ocean Pines) at Tuesday’s meeting said solar panel placement, and how much control local government gets in the process, is a conversation many rural counties are having lately in Maryland.

“When it gets right down to it, the individual property owners are the ones that really decide whether those solar panels go on their property,” he said. “The more information they have, the better off we’ll all be.”