Localities will get no tax revenue from solar panels

by Tom Chillemi – 

The Middlesex County Board of Supervisors recently approved a special exception submitted by Sun Tribe Solar for a small utility scale solar energy facility on 60 acres at Hartfield.

Emerging from the supervisors’ discussion at their February 4 meeting was the fact that localities will not get tax revenue from solar panels, explained Hartfield District supervisor John Koontz, who is employed in the solar industry. “Dominion Energy has rewritten the legislation in Richmond that makes it so that all the assets (solar panels) that are being deployed, millions of dollars of assets, we are not going to get a penny of tax revenue off of those.”

Koontz added, “There are a lot of unseen benefits [to solar].” In the future, energy companies will be building electricity storage facilities…