Solar Farm Leasing in Currituck County, North Carolina

A correction first: the nearby wind farm isn't in Currituck County

Northeastern North Carolina is genuinely home to the state's first utility-scale wind farm -- Amazon Wind Farm US East, 104 turbines generating 208 megawatts, developed by Avangrid Renewables and fully operational since 2017 -- but it sits on farmland in Pasquotank and Perquimans counties, west of Elizabeth City, roughly 20 to 30 miles from Currituck County, not within it. If you've heard Currituck associated with that project, it's a regional mix-up worth correcting before it shapes an expectation about a specific Currituck parcel's lease potential for wind. Currituck's real renewable-energy leasing story is solar, and it's substantial enough to stand on its own.

From an outright moratorium to a working solar ordinance

In February 2017, after approving two earlier solar-farm permits, the Currituck County Board of Commissioners imposed an indefinite moratorium on any new ones, responding to neighbor concerns over property values, drainage, and the conversion of farmland to industrial-scale energy use. That moratorium held for roughly two years before the board revisited it: in January 2019, commissioners voted 4-3 to end the moratorium by adopting a new ordinance specifically regulating utility-scale solar development in the county.

The path to that 2019 ordinance is itself instructive for anyone evaluating a lease offer on their own land: an earlier draft would have capped a solar farm's size at 250 acres or half the property, whichever was greater, but the board removed that specific cap from the version it actually adopted, after nearly a dozen Currituck farmers spoke against the draft's restrictions and specifically asked for the ability to lease larger portions of their land. Their argument -- that lease income would let them keep farming the rest of their acreage rather than being forced to sell it outright for development -- is exactly the kind of real, local economic reasoning that shaped the ordinance's final form, not a hypothetical policy debate.

What the ordinance actually requires today

The adopted ordinance requires a 300-foot buffer between a solar facility and adjoining properties, and mandates that 30% of a solar site's total acreage remain either active farmland or dedicated pollinator habitat -- meaning a Currituck solar farm is not permitted to convert 100% of a leased parcel to panels, by design. On overall project size, sourcing genuinely conflicts: 2019 reporting on the final ordinance's adoption describes the size cap being dropped from the draft, while a more recent renewable-energy siting reference (the Carolinas Renewable Energy Development Assistance and Siting Hub) describes a current maximum of 1,000 acres for a single owner or 1,500 acres for adjoining parcels under different ownership. The most likely explanation is that the county amended or clarified its size limits at some point after 2019 -- this page does not assert a single current figure with full confidence and instead flags this directly: confirm the current acreage cap with Currituck County Planning & Community Development before assuming either figure applies to a specific lease negotiation today.

Two real projects illustrate what the ordinance has actually produced: a roughly 650-acre solar facility sited near Moyock, on the mainland's northern end close to the Virginia line, and a 150-megawatt SunEnergy1 project in Shawboro spanning roughly 1,000 or more acres, assembled from ten separate parcels near East Ridge Road and NC Highway 34. Both are genuine, sited, operating or approved facilities, not speculative proposals -- evidence that utility-scale solar leasing is an active, ongoing land use on Currituck's mainland today, not a one-off pilot project.

What a landowner or buyer should actually check

• Confirm the current maximum project acreage and any parcel-aggregation rule directly with Currituck County Planning & Community Development -- do not rely on either the 2019 news coverage or a third-party siting-hub summary alone, since the two describe meaningfully different size limits.
• If you're the one considering a lease offer, ask specifically how the 30% active-farmland-or-pollinator-habitat requirement would be structured on your particular parcel, and get the 300-foot adjoining-property buffer confirmed against your actual property lines before signing anything.
• If you're buying land near an existing or proposed solar site (such as the Moyock or Shawboro facilities), ask the county for the facility's approved site plan and decommissioning bond requirements, since a multi-decade utility lease and eventual panel removal are both realistic, long-horizon factors for a neighboring parcel's value and use.
• Don't assume a wind-lease inquiry applies to Currituck mainland land -- the county's real, active utility-scale renewable-energy market here is solar; a wind-specific inquiry is more relevantly directed toward Pasquotank or Perquimans County landowners near the existing Amazon Wind Farm US East footprint.