I’ve found that the majority of concerns surrounding utility-scale solar farms are misguided.
by Lucinda Lough
Magazine
October 20, 2026
5:26 PM
Six years ago, I began restoring the property around my home in Northeast Wisconsin back to native prairie land. As a lifelong rural resident, it came naturally to dive deeper into my environmentalism after retiring from a career as an electrical engineer. Each year I have added more acres to the prairie. For the last few of these years, I’ve also watched rooftop solar technology accelerate and come down in cost, planning for my own installation. So I was confused when, a few months ago, a fellow environmentalist from a neighboring community shared a warning on social media about a solar farm development proposed in his township.
The development “threatens” previous work to clean up local waterways, he said in his post, and the community was at risk of being “sold out” if it went through. He included a Change.org link to a petition for the Wisconsin Public Service Commission to deny the project’s approval.
Wait, I thought. Effective implementation of clean energy technologies is a good thing. The climate, the viability of our planet, and our very existence hang in the balance of our ability to steer away from fossil fuel. So I did what a scientist does and started gathering information—including attending town meetings across my corner of Wisconsin.
From standing-room-only township board meetings to community informational gatherings, objections and fears are brought up, some legitimate and others based on misinformation. Tempers flare, voices are raised, and one problematic comparison is repeatedly trotted out. Over and over, large-scale solar is spoken in the same breath as hyperscale data centers with trepidation and disgust.
“Who here is against data [centers]?” one resident polled a packed room at a zoning committee meeting in Shawano County on a weekday in June. Almost every hand shot up. Officials were voting that day on a proposed moratorium on data center construction. The resident followed up with a second question: “Who here is against solar?” There was some confusion, but still a lot of hands in the air.
More and more, the debates about solar energy developments at the utility scale mirror those surrounding the nationwide data center boom supporting the artificial intelligence tech bubble. This is a dangerous false equivalency.
At meetings about solar developments, like those about data centers, residents demand to know which local farmers lease property to developers. The loss of productive farmland is discussed. Queries are made about their impact on water quality and sound levels. Disagreement over land use has driven families apart. Neighboring landowners are appalled at what will be next door or filled with a fatalistic sense that they are witnessing the demise of their environment.
Lucinda Lough
Solar panels at Alliant Energy’s Springfield Solar, a 100-megawatt solar development in Dodge County, Wisconsin.
But I’ve found that the majority of concerns surrounding utility-scale solar farms are misguided. In addition to attending local meetings, I’ve deepened my technical research and have toured the facilities at Geronimo Power’s Portage Solar in Portage County, Wisconsin, and Alliant Energy’s Springfield Solar in Dodge County. What I’ve found has been surprising.
One of the most often-repeated concerns about solar farms is based on anecdotal incidents involving older technology. The “lake effect” problem cited in numerous studies—in which aquatic birds mistake the dark reflective surface of a solar farm for water and either crash land or land and cannot take off again—is based on a single dataset from one solar site installed prior to the adoption of anti-reflective coating on panels.
Other concerns have been addressed by lessons learned within the industry. Complaints about the hum of transformer units are now addressed by properly locating them at the center of solar development sites, and sound readings have been incorporated into the Wisconsin Public Service Commission requirements. In order to meet other such requirements, utility-scale developers now enlist environmental, archaeological, and vegetation management specialists for the project aspects outside of their expertise.
Despite much improvement in standards, there are reports that the fossil fuel industry is exploiting the public’s lack of knowledge on the issue. NPR reported in 2023 that one nonprofit with ties to conservative political figures and fossil fuel interests, Citizens for Responsible Solar, helped to beat back solar projects in at least ten states.
This isn’t to argue that solar and other renewable energy developments are totally free from problems. Some players in the space actively pursue “underutilized” clean energy generation and partner with hyperscale data centers to quickly move in. Renewables can be used to give a green veneer to the otherwise environmentally disastrous endeavor of building data centers. Houston-based Cloverleaf Infrastructure is one such up-and-coming company.
In these cases, rural communities with approved utility-scale solar farms (and often insufficient zoning in place) are perfect targets. But there are better ways to use renewable energy than to power data centers that—unlike large-scale solar developments—are largely unregulated.
I feel a sharp pain from the unnecessary conflict in my communities. Township meetings are about how to keep the roads patched and whether there is enough in the budget for snow plowing. With buy-in from rural landowners, utility-scale solar implementations could bring in financial benefits to keep the snow plowed and redo the whole road, not just patch it.
Communities that host solar energy projects by leasing farmland to developers can generate what in Wisconsin is called “utility aid.” According to environmental advocacy group Clean Wisconsin, “It is calculated using a formula based on the size of the energy project, with $5,000 per megawatt (MW) split between the hosting town, village, or city and the hosting county. For example, a 150 MW solar project would generate $750,000 in annual payments split between the town and county. Over the anticipated thirty-year life of a project, that would be $22.5 million in revenue.”
And the landowners themselves also benefit. According to an estimate by American Clean Power, Wisconsin farmers, ranchers, and landowners receive $15.3 million in annual land lease payments from solar projects. These leases can keep the farms intact for future generations, as upon completion of a utility-scale solar project, the land is allowed to rest as an intact acreage of grassland habitat for twenty to thirty years.
So, how can we engage rural communities and bring all of the stakeholders to the same page? Solar advocates, which in my state include organizations like RENEW Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin–Madison RESET program, always need support. But at the local level, it makes a difference to attend township and county board meetings—all the time, not just when a major conflict surfaces. Listen more than you speak—sometimes the chatter before and after the meeting is more important than the meeting itself.
Your own ability to change hearts and minds is also significant. Armed with evidence-based research, I have personally quelled the concerns of one to three people at every meeting I have attended. Engage as a community member, not a drop-in. As I have, you might offer assistance to board members who may work full time in addition to holding local public office. If you live in an urban or suburban area, locate a nearby township and adopt it and start attending meetings.
Despite what Big Tech is trying to sell us, data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom are not the wave of the future. But an economy powered by renewable energy is. In order to get there, we need to talk to one another, ask questions, and carefully learn the lay of the land before we build anything on it.
Lucinda Lough is a retired electrical engineer and country girl residing in rural Northeast Wisconsin with a passion for her planet.
October 20, 2026
5:26 PM
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