Wind & Solar Land Leasing in Perkins County, NE

Perkins County landowners are already fielding real lease offers for utility-scale solar -- Lightsource bp's $350 million Golden Plains project is moving forward east of Grant -- but the County Board has separately frozen new commercial wind, solar, and CO2-storage permit applications since August 2025, tied to the same zoning rewrite covered on this county's hub page. Which situation applies to a given parcel depends entirely on timing and permit status.

This page covers what's specific to Perkins County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

A temporary moratorium is currently blocking new commercial applications

In August 2025, the Perkins County Board of Commissioners adopted a temporary moratorium, under Article 6 (Supplemental District Regulations) of the county's zoning regulations, on development of small wind energy systems, commercial/utility-grade wind energy systems, solar conversion systems, wireless communication towers, and crypto-mining facilities -- and on the county's acceptance of new conditional use permit applications for any of them. The moratorium was set to run for the lesser of nine months or until the county finished studying and adopting updated zoning regulations. That timeline lines up directly with the zoning rewrite the county hub page already describes: the Planning Commission's sixth revision and April 2026 public hearing, and the County Board's May 18, 2026 meeting taking up the 2026 zoning regulations. Board materials for that same May 2026 meeting show the moratorium specifically being addressed alongside adoption of the new regulations, meaning a landowner approached today about a new commercial wind or solar lease should not assume the county will currently accept and process a conditional use permit application for it.

This matters for lease negotiations in a very practical way. A developer's lease offer is often contingent on the developer's own ability to obtain local permits -- if Perkins County is not currently accepting new commercial wind, solar, or CO2-storage conditional use permit applications, a signed lease may sit in limbo until the county's 2026 regulations are finalized and the moratorium lifts (or a project is specifically exempted). Ask WCNDD, the county's contract Zoning Administrator, directly for the moratorium's current status, whether it has lifted with adoption of the 2026 regulations, and what the finalized regulations say about setbacks, decommissioning requirements, and application fees for commercial wind and solar systems before signing anything.

Meanwhile, at least one large project already has its permit

The moratorium does not mean Perkins County has no wind or solar development -- it means new applications are currently frozen, not that existing ones are undone. Lightsource bp's Golden Plains Solar and Storage project, a privately funded $350 million development with 120 MWac of battery storage, is moving forward on roughly 1,000 acres on both sides of Highway 61 about a mile east of Grant, on land associated with several named area landowners. County commissioners have already worked through the project's permitting; Lightsource bp's own materials describe standard solar lease terms in this market as running 30 to 40 years, at rental income the company positions as competitive with standard agricultural cash rents, and the project is projected to contribute an estimated $36 million to the local tax base over its life while creating roughly 280 construction jobs with a local-hire preference. Separately, Midwest Electric Cooperative Corp. obtained its own county conditional use permit for a smaller, 2.0 MW AC solar generation facility with battery storage, and a modest 96-kilowatt community solar project has operated near Venango since 2017.

For a landowner or buyer evaluating a wind or solar lease offer in Perkins County today, the practical questions are specific: has this developer already secured a conditional use permit predating the 2025 moratorium (as Golden Plains and Midwest Electric's project apparently have), or would this project need a new application the county isn't currently accepting? What does the lease say about term length, decommissioning and site-restoration obligations at the end of the lease, and how rental payments compare to current agricultural cash-rent rates in the area? Get current answers on moratorium status, the finalized 2026 regulations' wind/solar provisions, and any pending applications directly from WCNDD and the Perkins County Clerk before signing a lease or relying on a developer's representation of where their project stands in the permitting process.

Wind and Solar Land Leasing in Perkins County, Nebraska

A temporary moratorium is currently blocking new commercial applications

Meanwhile, at least one large project already has its permit

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