The Conroe City Council approved an ordinance that will allow residents to install solar and wind energy conversion systems as accessories to homes.
City Attorney Michael Garner said the new ordinance will establish a permitting process for the systems and distance to neighboring properties.
One key element to the ordinance is limiting what structures the systems can service and prohibiting large wind and solar farms, Garner said.
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“It will restrict the distance from the primary structure to the secondary structure so instead of getting these large wind or solar farms properties, they will be restricted to just serving those structures on the property,” Garner said during council’s Aug. 9 workshop.
Councilman Howard Wood said he requested the city’s legal department develop the ordinance as companies have considered Conroe and Montgomery County for solar farms.
“This is just a proactive step so we have control of what’s coming into our city,” Wood said. “There could be a lot of environment damage and harm if we don’t manage them and control it.”
While there are residential solar systems in Montgomery County, so far there are no solar or wind farms in the county.
According to information from the Solar Energy Industries Association, solar has experienced an average annual growth rate of 24 percent in the last decade. There are more than 149 gigawatts of solar capacity installed nationwide which is enough to power 26 million homes.
In the first quarter of the year, 54 percent of all new electric capacity added to the grid came from solar.
The cost to install solar has dropped by more than 50 percent over the last decade, leading the industry to expand into new markets and deploy thousands of systems nationwide.
An average-sized residential system has dropped from a pre-incentive price of $40,000 in 2010 to roughly $25,000.
