Solar Leasing on Land in Nash County, North Carolina

Two large, named solar approvals near Castalia

Nash County has real, large-scale, well-documented solar development activity concentrated in its rural northeastern area near Castalia. In 2023, the county's Planning Board unanimously approved a conditional rezoning for an 858-acre solar farm -- the Skylight Solar Farm, developed by NextEra Energy Resources on land owned by Sorghum Ventures -- sited on mostly undeveloped agricultural-zoned land on the northwest side of Taylors Gin Road. A year later, in 2024, county commissioners approved a second, separate project east of Castalia: an 80-megawatt, roughly $100 million solar farm on 420.65 acres across two tracts, brought by applicant Gideon Solar LLC working with Birdseye Renewable Energy LLC.

For a landowner in this part of Nash County, that back-to-back pattern of large, named, quantified project approvals is a real signal that developers are actively working the area and have already cleared local approval twice in as many years -- useful comparable information if you're weighing your own land's solar-lease potential against recent deal terms and acreage.

A moratorium and a proposed one-mile buffer -- the pace has drawn a policy response

That pace of approval prompted its own regulatory response. On October 21, 2024, the Nash County Planning Board's own meeting minutes record that the county enacted a temporary moratorium on approval of special-use permits for new solar energy systems. As part of that same process, the Board of Commissioners considered a proposed ordinance amendment that would create a one-mile "no further solar development" radius buffer around each already-approved solar project -- a meaningfully different regulatory tool than a simple acreage cap or density limit, since it would restrict new projects based on proximity to existing ones rather than total farmland converted.

As with any moratorium, this is inherently a temporary, evolving state rather than a fixed rule -- the county may have since let it expire, extended it, or adopted the one-mile buffer (or a different final version of it) as a permanent standard. If you are evaluating land within roughly a mile of either the Skylight Solar Farm or the 2024 Gideon Solar project near Castalia specifically, that buffer proposal could be directly relevant to whether your own land is even eligible for a new solar special-use permit -- confirm the current, in-force rule with Nash County Planning before assuming either outcome.

What to ask before signing a Nash County solar lease

• Current moratorium and buffer-zone status -- confirm directly with Nash County Planning whether the one-mile no-further-development buffer around approved projects (or some other version of the post-2024 ordinance amendment) is currently in force, and whether your parcel falls inside any such buffer.
• Whether your land sits near the Skylight Solar Farm (Castalia, 858 acres, NextEra/Sorghum Ventures) or the 2024 Gideon Solar project (420.65 acres, ~80 MW) specifically, since proximity to an already-approved project is the exact fact pattern the proposed buffer rule is built around.
• Lease term, renewal, and decommissioning provisions -- who is responsible for removing panels, racking, and interconnection equipment at the end of the lease, and whether a bond or other financial assurance backs that obligation.
• Whether the developer has a signed offtake or interconnection agreement already in place, or is still shopping the project -- a project with committed capacity and interconnection queue position is meaningfully further along than one still being marketed to landowners.
• Whether neighboring landowners have raised organized objections to development in the area, given that the moratorium itself reflects real local pushback against the pace of solar conversion of farmland here.