by Frieda McClain
government reporter
After ten meetings over the course of 12 months on the topic of regulating ground-mounted solar panels in homes in Greenwood Village, on December 6, the city council passed a final reading of a law describing how its residents could install such systems on their properties from now on.
One requirement is that the total surface area (the length of the width of each panel) for the solar power system must be accounted for within the property’s maximum allowable square foot of ancillary structures. The GV Land Development Act states that “annexed structures shall not occupy more than thirty percent (30%) of the back yard or thirty percent (30%) of the side yard.” Therefore, any GV resident wishing to install a ground-mounted solar system must first calculate the number of square feet of land in their side yard or backyard, depending on where they want to place the solar panels. Then they must measure the area in square feet of each of the solar panels in the array and ensure that this total area, along with the number of square meters of their property occupied by any other ancillary structures they have or may want to have in the future, such as sheds, barns, tennis courts, and playgrounds Sports, swimming pools, etc., do not exceed 30% of the number of square feet that make up the side or backyard they wish to use to house solar panels and any other ancillary structures. In addition, these clean energy systems must be accompanied by “densely landscaped year-round farms of sufficient height and mass to be effectively screened with at least 80% of visibility” if they are “visible from ground-level living areas in adjacent properties.” “. The new regulation also requires solar arrays to be no more than six feet in height on large ground floors three-quarters of an acre or less and no more than nine feet in height on lots of total land of one acre or greater.
While negotiating these regulatory details over the past year, the GV Board has asked the city’s planning staff to research how other cities are regulating their ground-mounted solar panel systems. On September 13, city employees reported that Aurora, Boulder, Castle Rock, Cherry Hills Village, Denver, Englewood, Lakewood, Littleton, Lone Tree, Parker, Thornton and Westminster had no screening requirements for ground-mounted solar arrays, except that Lakewood requires no Solar arrays are checked only if they are in the front yard of the property. (At GV, they won’t be allowed in the front yard.) Staff reported that most but not all cities only require that ground-mounted solar systems meet setback requirements. Likewise, in neighboring Centennial, villager It found that the ground-mounted solar systems were not limited in height and did not need to be examined, only because they met the relapse requirements.
The language of this new regulation was settled after discussions in ten study sessions and city council meetings that began on January 4, 2021, when councilman Dave Bullock first reported that a resident of the neighborhood GV had complained to him about what he felt was an ugly solar array on a nearby property. It was discovered during one of the subsequent meetings on this issue held on May 3, 2021, May 17, 2021, June 7, 2021, July 19, 2021, August 16, 2021, September 13, 2021, October 18, 2021 and November 1, 2021, that the large solar array is not The covered screens that residents complained about had been properly installed with a properly approved city GI permit. The solar array was not inspected because the city did not ask to be inspected. During a meeting at the GV City Hall during the summer, villager She spoke to one of the spouses who submitted the original complaint to Bullock and asked her if she or her husband had spoken to their neighbor about their concerns. She told us they didn’t. We also found out that Bullock also never spoke to a neighborhood resident who had an off-screen solar array about their neighbor’s concerns.
During the year it took the city council to agree on how it wanted to regulate the ground-mounted solar panels, a number of council members, including former councilman Jerry Presley, who also represented District One, former councilman Tom Dougherty, and at times, recommended member The current council, Anne Ingebritsen, has the potential to solve the problem by city simply requiring that “ground-mounted solar arrays be reasonably examined” from the perspectives of neighbors.
On September 13, while discussing and debating this idea, Presley noted, “The word reasonable or reasonable appears 155 times in our municipal law. It is used to describe how trash cans are checked, it is used to describe how equestrian mirrors are checked and there are 144 other uses of this word. I don’t think we at risk by having the employees decide what is reasonable.” (In 2019, the council adopted another new ordinance to regulate equestrian mirrors only after a District One resident complained about the use of mirrors at some riding circuit sites to train a teenage resident for an equestrian competition at the Olympics.) To Presley noting that the term “reasonable” or “reasonable” is in common use in GV Municipal Code, Mayor Pro Tem Dave Kerber opined that “a reasonable standard is not a standard at all”. Bullock, on that occasion and several others, said he was against using the term “reasonably examined” because it would be based on the judgment of the city’s director of community development, and while he trusted the current director of community development, he did not trust future city employees In this post they will make a good judgment in this regard. Bullock insisted that the percentage check would be a better solution if the law contained a picture of what it was expected to look like. The city attorney noted that such an image could not be part of an ordinance, however the council could issue a new regulatory decision containing a picture of what adequate examination should look like, in conjunction with the new regulatory decree on the subject. In the end, that’s what the board decided to do.
There is no language in the new regulatory act that encourages GV residents to use solar or any other renewable energy. A new state law, SB21-261, passed this year, states that “Customer’s renewable power generation facilities … can make important contributions toward achieving Colorado’s stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while providing a reliable and adaptable supply of Electricity for homes and businesses and the rapidly growing numbers of electric vehicles, and those current restrictions on customer renewable power generation facilities unnecessarily limit this potential.” The new law removed the 120% restriction of a utility customer’s necessary energy use for renewable energy credits, allowing utility customers to produce more renewable energy than they use, which can then be stored or sold back to the facility. When the issue was raised over the course of the debate over this new ordinance, Bullock, who sponsored the rule, said, “I personally feel no connection or obligation to anything our legislature does because there are many people in Greenwood Village who do not” I disagree with What the Legislative Council decides.
It is worth noting that the new regulatory law applies only to ground-based solar arrays. Greenwood Village does not regulate or limit the use of rooftop solar panels. The ability to use roof-mounted solar panels is a function of the roof design, including where the sun falls and at what angle. A 2016 report from the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory states that for Colorado, the annual generation potential of rooftop solar arrays is only 27% of the total energy needs of small buildings (5,000 square feet or less) and 17% Of the total energy needs of medium and large buildings (more than 5,000 square feet). However, according to the US Energy Information Administration, since 2010, net renewable electricity generation in Colorado has more than tripled, led by increased wind and solar, and accounted for 30% of the state’s total generation in 2020.
Colorado law has held for ten years that homeowners’ associations cannot “prohibit or restrict the installation or use of a renewable energy device.” Any rules or regulations issued by the HOA to do so shall be deemed “void and unenforceable”.
fmiklin.villager@gmail.com
Editor’s Note: Previous reports in this series were published in The Villager on July 29, 2021, August 5, 2021, and September 23, 2021.