Suffolk staff to seek new solar rules after noise complaints; public hearing set June 18

City planning staff told Suffolk City Council on June 4 that the city will propose changes to its Unified Development Ordinance to address community concerns about noise from utility-scale solar facilities and the location of mechanical equipment.

The changes, the director of planning and community development, Kevin Wine, said, would require any facility approved with a conditional-use permit to maintain compliance with a required noise study and would create minimum setbacks for noise-generating equipment such as inverters and transformers.

The new provisions are meant to give staff and council leverage to enforce noise limits and, if necessary, revoke a conditional-use permit. “The first part of it is adding language to the UDO, requiring every facility, that is approved in the city with a conditional use permit that the noise study that is required to be associated with that, that they be in compliance with it at all times,” Wine said. He added that noncompliance would allow staff to issue notices of violation and could lead to revocation of a permit.

Why it matters: Residents living near the White Marsh solar facility reported continuous mechanical noise they compared to “a refrigerator running, but never turning off,” Wine said. The proposed text amendment is a direct response to those experiences and to lessons learned from existing sites.

Key details discussed

• Existing UDO setbacks: the city currently requires 150 feet from a public street, 100 feet from a residential district and 50 feet from other districts for the perimeter of a solar site.

• Proposed minimum setbacks for noise‑producing equipment: for facilities under 5 megawatts, inverters and transformers would be set back 400 feet from property lines; for facilities 5 megawatts or greater, inverters and transformers would be set back at least 1,000 feet. Substations or connector stations would have larger setbacks: 600 feet for smaller facilities and 1,500 feet for the larger sites described by staff.

• Megawatt cap: conditional-use permits would specify the maximum megawatts approved for a facility so that operators could not increase output later without additional review.

• Landscape buffers and fencing: staff proposes requiring landscape buffers on the exterior side of the perimeter fence and allowing equipment to cross internal property lines within a consolidated solar site to avoid unduly restricting future uses of individual parcels.

Staff said the measures are scalable: smaller sites that use string inverters tend to make less noise and would have smaller minimum setbacks than large-scale single-inverter installations. Wine noted staff is working with the community and with the existing solar developer at White Marsh to install an acoustic barrier at one inverter as a near-term mitigation; the city issued a permit for that work and staff expects installation soon.

The planning commission considered the draft at its May 20 meeting; staff scheduled the city council public hearing for June 18.

Discussion and next steps

Council members commended the planning commission and staff for the recommendations and said they expect the changes to address the problems experienced around earlier solar approvals. Wine said staff will present a formal UDO text amendment at the June 18 meeting. No ordinance vote was taken on June 4; the item remains in the public‑review stage.