Farm silos appear in the background behind rows of solar panels at the Yellowbud Solar Power Plant on Thursday near Williamsport, Ohio.
WILLIAMSPORT — Fields where soybeans, corn and other crops were once grown outside of this rural community along the Ross-Pickaway county line are now covered by 775,000 solar panels, enough to power 75,000 homes.
It's a story playing out across the state where more than 50 solar farms are either open or in some stage of development, many of them in agricultural communities like this one, and behind much of the push is a company many consumers use every day: Amazon.
The 274-megawatt Yellowbud Solar Farm became operational this summer. The developer behind the project, National Grid Renewables, is selling the electricity to Amazon as part of the e-commerce giant's effort to rely exclusively on renewable energy by 2025.
Amazon is buying the power from 17 solar farms in the state and one of Ohio's 11 wind farms to help run its operations, including the billions of dollars' worth of data centers it is building in central Ohio.
Amazon says it has been the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy for each of the past three years with more than 400 projects around the world.
“What we’re doing in Ohio is part of our broader program, which is to get all of our operations across the world powered with 100% renewable energy," Nat Sahlstrom, Amazon's head of energy, water and sustainability, said Thursday during a media tour of Yellowbud.
Yellowbud is National Grid Renewables' first operational solar farm in Ohio
The first indication that the solar farm is close is the large metal American Electric Power poles that line Westfall Road for miles leading to the farm's headquarters, a substation and the solar panels.
It's a rural area south of Williamsport and about in the middle of a triangle of cities — Circleville, Washington Court House and Chillicothe. There are just a small number of houses surrounding the 1,300 acres of solar panels that make up the 2,000-acre farm.
Yellowbud is National Grid Renewables' first operational solar farm in the state. The company has two other farms under construction.
"Ohio has become a really important part of our business," said Blake Nixon, president of National Grid Renewables president.
Blake Nixon, president of National Grid Renewables, walks in the rain during a tour with local media and delegates at the Yellowbud Solar Power Plant on Thursday in Williamsport, Ohio
Amazon's deal with National Grid Renewable powers renewable energy in Ohio
Amazon's decision to buy the electricity generated by Yellowbud is the driver for renewable energy projects, allowing wind and solar farm companies to raise money, buy equipment and build the projects, Amazon says.
Without buyers such as Amazon, such projects wouldn't be possible.
"This big of capital deployment can be a challenging thing to do unless you actually have someone with the balance sheet and appetite like Amazon,’’ Sahlstrom said.
He said a confluence of factors make such a project possible, ranging from the cost of power in the region where the farm is located, the transmission system, access to the electric grid and demand from customers.
"When we look at where we site locations, everything at Amazon starts with the customer," he said. "There’s a lot of appetite for renewable energy generation."
Amazon said Thursday that its commitment to buy electricity has generated an estimated $1.6 billion of investment and added $854 million to the state's economy from 2014 through 2022. The investment supported 3,560 jobs in Ohio last year.
Now that the solar farm is finished, it has eight workers. During construction, there were 550 workers on the site.
Amazon has pledged to make its growing operations in Ohio and elsewhere rely exclusively on renewable energy by 2025. As of the end of 2022, 90% of the electricity Amazon used to power its operations was from renewable energy resources, Amazon said.
Beyond its renewable energy investments, Amazon operations in Ohio include 17 fulfillment and sortation centers, 16 delivery stations, 12 Whole Foods Market locations, two Prime Now fulfillment centers and one air hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
But its biggest investments in the state are data centers. It operates seven data centers in central Ohio and announced in June its plan to spend another $7.8 billion on data centers in central Ohio in coming years.
Solar farm has generated few complaints
Solar farms are often the subject of complaints from residents who live close by who say they are unsightly, take away valuable farmland, damage roads, increase traffic during construction, and change the rural setting that they enjoy.
Yellowbud seemingly has been accepted well by the community.
There were just a handful of complaints about Yellowbud filed with state regulators, and most of those were about solar farms in general and not Yellowbud in particular. There aren't signs surrounding the site complaining about the project, as is often found in other parts of the state, even in places where there are no solar projects planned.
Nixon believes the company has done a good job of working with neighbors and local governments. The company cited the road improvements that have been made around the site as an example of its effort to leave things better than before the company started work in the region.
The company added trees and other plants on the outside of the panels that it says will one day be tall enough to block much of the view of the solar panels. Vegetation planted around the panels themselves will serve as a draw for birds, bees, butterflies and other wildlife.
“We've had a really nice reception in the community," he said. "We’re grateful to be here. ... I like to think that our company does things the right way."
Suzie Hill, 66, sits on the front porch of her home located across from the Yellowbud Solar Power Plant on Thursday near Williamsport, Ohio.
But one neighbor who lives across the road from part of the farm called it an "eyesore."
"I was very upset when we found out that it was going to be across the road from us," said Suzie Hill, 66.
She said when she sits on her back porch now, she pretends the solar panels are a lake when the sun shines on them.
"We live out here to see farmland, not solar panels," said Hill, who does not farm.
Workers have been polite, and she says she doesn't blame them for what has happened.
"We've accepted it as a reality," she said. "There's nothing we can do about it."
Cables are attached underneath a row of solar panels, which carry power from the panels to the combiner box at the Yellowbud Solar Panel Power Plant on Thursday near Williamsport, Ohio.
