Nearly 1,000 acres of solar panels are headed to the range land near the state-owned complex of prisons in southern Ada County. 
On December 30, the three Ada County Commissioners voted to approve a conditional use application to build a 150 megawatt solar farm and battery storage facility in the area surrounding the intersection of Pleasant Valley Road and Kuna Mora Road, just outside of Kuna city limits. The roughly 1,700-acre project stretches from the power substation on Cole Road on the western edge to properties east of the Idaho Department of Correction prison complex. 

Of the 1,700-acre project area, solar arrays will cover 950 acres of it. 
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Desri, the New York City-based developer, will own and operate the project across more than 20 parcels of land in a patchwork across the area. It will cover a combination of land owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the Idaho Department of Correction, and private property owners. A little more than 1,000 acres of the property is owned by IDOC and will be leased for the project. 
The project faced negative testimony from a handful of neighbors who raised concerns about disruptions to their daily life from the 8-10 foot tall solar arrays, including glare from the sun, construction noise, and fire risk from the lithium battery storage facility. Commissioners were sympathetic to these concerns and spent a lengthy amount of time asking questions about fire risk and plans to decommission the facility in the coming decades, but ultimately decided to approve it with extra conditions of approval. 

Commissioner Ryan Davidson acknowledged how many residents don’t want to live near a solar farm, but he said the board worked to address their concerns so the county can also respect the private property rights of the company. 
“We are moving toward more solar electric power in Ada County,” Davidson said. “A previous project was on prime farmland, and that was one of the primary reasons it was turned down. We’d much prefer to have these projects in the desert where there’s less people living and less prime farmland. I’m glad we can get this one done.”
Solar farm development in Ada County has been hotly debated over the past two years after a failed proposal to develop a 1,400-acre farm on the Canyon County border. The battle over the Powers Butte project turned the county’s zoning code rewrite into a venue for a debate over the private property rights of landowners and solar power companies versus nearby neighbors who wanted to stop farmland from turning into power production facilities. 

Rangeland vs farmland 

A key reason commissioners were more supportive of this project was its location on undeveloped range land. 
Unlike the failed Powers Butte proposal, which included active farmland, the vast majority of the proposal for this solar farm is empty, undeveloped land. Caitlyn Clancy, an analyst for Desri, told commissioners there are only 8.2 acres of the entire project area that are currently farmland with irrigation equipment installed, but not actively in use. Only 300 acres of the area would be considered prime farmland if it had an irrigation system installed. 
This project was submitted to the county prior to its newly adopted zoning code that tightened the county’s rules on developing solar power in Ada County, so those regulations do not apply to this project. The new code blocks solar panel development on any farmland classified as prime by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as farmland of statewide and local importance, as defined by the county officials. 
Desri’s project will include a transmission line to connect to the Idaho Power substation on Cole Road on the far western edge of the project. The battery storage facility will be located directly east of the substation, and the company will also include a maintenance facility and lay-down yard further within the interior of the project. 
Ada County required the company to submit a fire protection and evacuation plan prior to approval, as well as a plan to decommission the solar farm at the end of its roughly four-decade lifespan. Commissioners took the decommissioning plan requirement a step further by adding another condition for the company to post a bond to ensure there were funds for the project to be removed in the event the company were to go bankrupt years in the future. 
Commissioner Tom Dayley noted the State of Idaho’s lease with Desri covered fire protection and how far the solar panels would be setback from the property line, but he wanted the county’s requirements to cover all of the other privately owned land in the project as well. He added another condition requiring the company to have the property annexed into the nearby Kuna Rural Fire District and for the company to have water access on site in case of an emergency. 
He noted the water on-site would help fight any fires spreading throughout the facility or onto nearby property, even if water cannot be used directly on burning lithium-ion batteries used in energy storage facilities. 
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