Solar Leasing on Land in Calhoun County, South Carolina

A real, named utility-scale project: Midlands Solar

Calhoun County's solar activity isn't speculative -- Midlands Solar, a 72.1-megawatt solar farm, was under active engineering as of September 2025 with Timmons Group as the engineering firm of record, a genuine, dated, quantified project rather than a general regional trend. For a Calhoun County landowner, that's useful comparable information: a project of that scale has already worked through the county's process, which gives some indication of what a developer proposing a similar project on your own land might expect to negotiate and permit.

A detailed county ordinance, not a generic zoning catch-all

Calhoun County Council took up new solar farm rules and advanced them through the legislative process, reflecting the county's own stated planning concern -- laid out explicitly in its Comprehensive Plan's Natural Resources materials -- about balancing farmland and working-forest preservation against property owners' rights and economic development interest in leasing to solar developers. The resulting ordinance for ground-mounted commercial solar installations is genuinely specific rather than a generic industrial-use provision retrofitted to solar: it requires a 500-foot setback from incorporated areas, subdivisions, and sensitive structures such as churches, schools, hospitals, and residences; a 250-foot setback from residential or commercial property lines to the security fence itself; and a 150-foot setback from any road right-of-way to the fence.

Beyond setbacks, the ordinance requires a continuous vegetative buffer yard around the entire development, positioned on the exterior of the security fence and maintained for the life of the installation -- and that buffer must be designed by a landscape architect registered in South Carolina, not just planted informally. Sites must also comply with the South Carolina Solar Habitat Act, meaning approved pollinator-friendly seed mixes, wetland protection, and wildlife-friendly fencing that excludes barbed wire. Grading is capped at 10% of the total site, with an additional 10% allowed for temporary construction work -- a real constraint on how much of a sloped or wooded parcel could actually be cleared for panels.

What this means for your parcel

These setback and buffer numbers are large enough to meaningfully shrink the usable footprint of a smaller or irregularly shaped parcel -- a 500-foot setback from a school or church, or a 250-foot setback from a neighboring house, can eliminate a substantial share of a modest tract's total acreage from actual panel placement, even before accounting for the vegetative buffer requirement layered on top. Before assuming your land is a strong solar-lease candidate, map these setbacks against your parcel's actual boundaries and nearby sensitive uses, and ask Calhoun County Building and Planning for the current, complete ordinance text and any site-plan requirements beyond what's summarized here.

As with any solar lease, also confirm decommissioning and financial-assurance terms directly with the developer -- this county's own posted ordinance materials found this pass did not include a specific decommissioning-bond dollar figure or percentage the way some neighboring counties' ordinances do, so don't assume Calhoun County's rules alone guarantee a funded removal obligation; get that commitment written into your lease itself.