The Alexanders were accustomed to a quiet homestead.
Their farm on White Marsh Road in Suffolk has been in the family for 100 years. Tiffany Alexander and her 85-year-old mother have both lived there their entire lives.
But the sonic landscape changed in 2022 when the 99-acre Stratford Solar farm went online across the road from her property. Tiffany Alexander said the noise has impacted area wildlife and her health, and has led the family to consider leaving.
“I shouldn’t have to uproot (my mom),” Tiffany Alexander said. “She grew up in that house back there, and her dad built this house here.”
Tiffany and her husband Shane Alexander brought their experience to City Hall in November when a new, smaller solar farm by a different company was proposed further down White Marsh Road.
“I know there’s not much that I can do about it,” she said during the public hearing in November.
“But if I can stop somebody else from having to go through the literal hell that I have been through in the last year, I will do whatever I have to do, say whatever I have to say and talk to whoever I have to talk to to stop it.”
The situation highlights a trend of conflicts between solar farm developers and their frequently rural community neighbors.
Energy providers like Dominion need to develop new solar farms in order to meet the charge of the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act, which requires it to generate 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2045. Population density in Hampton Roads leads them and other solar companies to look to rural areas like James City County and Suffolk for new projects in the region.
But as energy companies pivot to renewables like solar and wind power, many cities and counties had to update local regulations to catch up with the new energy infrastructure.
“We had very little guidelines to go by in our ordinances,” Mayor Mike Duman said at the November city council meeting, apologizing to the Alexanders for the noise.
Suffolk has since passed more stringent solar farm rules, which limit their development to about 1,600 acres of agricultural land citywide and require noise studies prior to approval. The rules were not in place when the 15-megawatt Stratford Solar was approved.
Having no rules to the contrary, Stratford Solar developer Pine Gate Renewables placed multiple of the project’s power inverters near the property’s fence along White Marsh Road. Inverters are necessary to change the direct current electricity generated by the solar panels into the alternating current electricity that the power grid runs on, also generating an audible whirring sound.
With only young, still-growing vegetation dotting the perimeter, the Alexanders told city council nothing adequately buffers the noise the inverters emanate from sun-up to sun-down.
“Thanksgiving Day, I was outside all day long just doing chores,” Shane Alexander said. “I listened to this all day.”
Tiffany Alexander said her family can even hear the sound inside the house with the windows shut. Shane Alexander said they have finalized a deal with a contractor for $11,000 to better soundproof the house.
The Alexanders’ story, in part, prompted Suffolk City Council to delay a vote on the new 14-acre, 3-megawatt project on White Marsh Road proposed by Nexamp Solar, which specializes in community-scale solar projects as opposed to the larger utility-scale Stratford Solar facility.
“You’ve got a bad black eye from a bad project that’s nearby, and that’s hard to overcome,” Councilmember Shelley Butler Barlow said.
Council tabled the vote until its Dec. 18 meeting in order for Nexamp to more widely engage residents on White Marsh, as well as to give time for city staff to investigate the noise at the Stratford Solar field.
“What I would like to see is … a report back from the city manager as to what their remediation efforts will entail, so that we can hopefully get that situation a whole lot more palatable to the community and hopefully, maybe, make this one just a little bit easier to go,” Councilmember John Rector said.
City staff have since visited the Stratford Solar site and confirmed the noise issue raised by the Alexanders. Suffolk city communications staff said in a statement that staff “contacted leadership at the solar facility and requested they identify the issue and make efforts to mitigate the issue.”
“As a result, the facility has installed hay bales in front of Pad 2, the inverter closest to the fence along the road, which significantly reduced the sound heard in neighboring parcels.”
Current regulations in the city’s Unified Development Ordinance require 15 to 50 feet of vegetation as visual screening, though the ordinance was not crafted with noise screening in mind.
“We have to continue to learn by our mistakes and continue to amend our ordinances so we can assure that (with) these projects coming forward, we don't have to deal with the issues that have been experienced with projects prior to that,” Duman said.
A permanent noise buffer is expected to be installed over at least the next six months, according to the release. The Alexanders, though, say they haven’t heard a change.
“Six months is going to be ridiculous,” Shane Alexander said. “Until something gets done, I’ll be pretty much at every city council meeting, speaking every time.”
