Jingleville Road solar developers to meet in Canton

CANTON—Developers of a proposed 5-megawatt commercial solar farm on Jingleville Road will meet with the Canton’s Town Planning Board Monday, Jan. 5. 

The meeting will take place at 6 p.m. in the board room in Canton’s municipal building at 60 Main Street, and will be available as a view-only stream on Zoom. 

Connecticut-based energy developer Lodestar Energy approached the Town of Canton Planning Board in April with the prospect of erecting a 5-megawatt solar array on 23 acres of land near Jingleville Road.

Prior to the April meeting, Lodestar had purchased 82 acres of land at that location for the purposes of solar development.

The company owns about 40 solar farms, mainly in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New York. It currently operates three solar arrays in the Southern Tier region of New York. 

In April, Lodestar project developer Adam Rowles said that the company chose Canton in part because solar development has been in full swing in New York state for about a decade, and there are few remaining spaces to connect new solar projects to the state’s solar grid. “With National Grid there’s really only a couple stations that have open capacity left in the state, and Canton is one of them,” Rowles said.

Without large-scale upgrades to the state’s electrical infrastructure, fewer new energy projects are expected to be implemented in the coming years. 

At the initial meeting, Rowles noted that the company was in the early stages of development, but noted that the location in question could be ideal for a solar development, as much of it is already screened by trees. 

The Lodestar project would be located near the 240-megawatt Rich Road Solar development in the works for Canton. Construction on that project was expected to begin as early as the current year, though rising prices and other factors have delayed its construction start date until at least 2027. 

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