Council approves solar zoning text amendment with rooftop standards, keeps larger farm-scale rules for further review

The Lexington City General Government & Planning Committee on July 1 adopted a zoning ordinance text amendment to clarify how solar energy systems will be regulated in the city, approving updated standards for rooftop and smaller ground-mounted systems while leaving a separate, more detailed process for large agricultural (AG) solar proposals.

The amendment, based on a planning commission recommendation and further edits from Councilmember Savigny and Chair Dr. Sheehan, establishes clear definitions and review processes for integrated (built-in), rooftop and ground-mounted solar; raises the intermediate ground-mounted threshold to 10 acres; and adopts new general requirements for integrated and rooftop systems that the committee added during the meeting. The committee voted to report the item to the full council for an August 19 work session.

The action matters because Lexington currently lacks a cohesive local framework for private solar projects outside utility-scale installations. Daniel Crum, the planning divisions principal planner, told the committee that public-utility scale solar is regulated by the Kentucky Public Service Commission and therefore is generally exempt from local zoning, but that privately developed rooftop and ground-mounted systems need local standards to remove ambiguity for property owners and reviewers.

Crum said the planning commissions draft divided ground-mounted solar by size: small (up to 2,500 square feet of panel area), intermediate (previously up to 5 acres in the planning commission draft) and large (greater than 5 acres). Councilmember Savignys edits, which the committee discussed at length, changed the intermediate threshold to 10 acres to align with a model ordinance from the Kentucky Resources Council and added definitions such as "prime farmland" and new criteria for height, glare, vegetative cover and decommissioning plans.

"There are two big issues here, equity and local…