Solar Leasing in Genesee County: New York's Largest Solar Farm Is Here

Three utility-scale projects, thousands of acres, one state agency

Genesee County is now home to some of the largest solar developments in New York State. The Excelsior Energy Center, a 280-megawatt facility spanning roughly 3,600 acres in the Town of Byron, received its state siting certificate in April 2022 and was under active construction as of 2026. Cider Solar, a 500-megawatt facility across roughly 4,650 acres in the Towns of Elba and Oakfield, is on track to become New York's single largest solar farm, with major construction underway since May 2025 and commercial operation targeted for late 2026 -- expected to generate about one million megawatt-hours annually, enough for roughly 120,000 households. A third project, EDP Renewables' proposed Alabama Solar Park, would lease roughly 2,000 acres across the Towns of Alabama, Batavia, and Oakfield (with about 550 acres of actual solar infrastructure), with an Article 94-c application planned for late 2025.

All three projects run (or ran) through New York's state-level major renewable energy facility siting process -- the original Article 10 framework under the Public Service Law for Excelsior, and its successor, Section 94-c of the Executive Law, administered by the state's Office of Renewable Energy Siting and Electric Transmission (ORES), for Cider Solar and the proposed Alabama project. That distinction matters enormously for a Genesee County land buyer: a project large enough to trigger Article 10/94-c review is sited and permitted by the state, and state law allows ORES to override a local town's zoning and other local laws that would otherwise block or unreasonably restrict the project -- a genuinely different process from the town-by-town zoning review that governs almost everything else in this county's land market.

What state preemption actually means for a nearby or affected parcel

In practice, the Section 94-c process still involves local input -- host towns negotiate Host Community Benefit Agreements with the developer (Cider Solar's agreement with the Town of Elba is a documented example), and ORES review includes a public comment and local-government-participation process. But the final permitting decision rests with the state, not the town planning board, and a local zoning provision that conflicts with the approved project generally cannot block it. For a buyer evaluating land near one of these project footprints, that means the standard question ("what does the town's zoning allow here?") is the wrong first question for anything already inside an approved project boundary -- the right question is what the state permit and the host community agreement actually specify for setbacks, buffers, and land uses at that project's edge.

State-permitted large-scale solar projects sited on farmland are also generally required to develop an Agricultural Co-Utilization or Agricultural Impact Mitigation plan -- addressing things like pollinator-habitat plantings under and around panels, drainage and field-tile protection, topsoil handling during construction, and a decommissioning plan (with financial security, typically a bond or escrow) requiring the developer to remove the array and restore the land to agricultural use at the end of the lease. These plans are project-specific and filed with the state siting record, not the county, so a parcel's specific mitigation requirements should be checked against that project's actual filing rather than assumed from general practice.

What lease income and local reaction actually look like here

Local reporting has put Genesee County solar lease payments as high as roughly $2,000 per acre annually for some farmer leases, within a broader New York community-solar lease range generally reported at roughly $1,000 to $1,500 per acre -- real, useful reference points, but figures reported by news outlets rather than a county- or state-published rate schedule, so treat them as illustrative rather than a guaranteed number for any specific negotiation. Genesee County devotes about 56% of its land to agriculture, the highest share of any New York county, according to a 2024 state comptroller's office report -- and that same agricultural land base is now also the state's leading solar-development target, a genuine tension the county's own elected officials have publicly voiced frustration over as the pace and scale of new proposals has increased.

That local friction is worth knowing about even for a buyer with no interest in leasing: continuing large-scale solar buildout can change the character, viewshed, and long-term agricultural-land inventory of a given part of the county, and local political pressure has been pushing toward more scrutiny (not less) of future proposals. A parcel adjacent to or near an approved project boundary is a different practical proposition -- in terms of neighbors, land use, and future development pressure -- than a comparable parcel elsewhere in the county untouched by any of this activity.

What to check before leasing land or buying near a project

1. If you're considering leasing your own land, get the complete lease agreement (not a summary) -- payment structure and escalation, lease term and any option/renewal periods, transferability to a future owner, and the specific decommissioning and land-restoration obligations and their financial security.
2. Check whether your land, or land you're buying, sits within an active project's state-approved boundary (Excelsior, Cider Solar, or the proposed Alabama Solar Park) -- if so, town zoning may not be the controlling authority, and the project's own state siting permit and Host Community Benefit Agreement are the documents to review.
3. For a parcel near but outside a project boundary, ask the specific town whether it has adopted its own solar-specific zoning provisions for anything not covered by state preemption, since Genesee County itself has no countywide solar ordinance.
4. Confirm whether the parcel is in an active Agricultural District, since that status affects both a landowner's own solar-leasing prospects and how a large solar project's state permit conditions may address agricultural land use and mitigation nearby.
5. For land near an active construction site (Excelsior, Cider Solar), ask about the project's expected completion timeline and any temporary construction-traffic, dust, or access impacts specific to the surrounding area before assuming current conditions are permanent.