Solar Power Cells, Hot Water, Energy, Collectors

County's second solar farm set to go online in 2015

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“I have picked up where my grandfather left off and am farming again on our family land,” said Steve Ivey, of the project’s developer Simon Solar Farm. “It is the exact same concept — using the sun to make a crop. His crop was cotton and my crop is clean energy.”

Ivey’s grandparents — Robert Simons and Lily Belle Studdard Simons — were born in Social Circle and in the 1940s owned the house that now serves as City Hall. They purchased the land proposed for the solar farm in 1935 and began cotton farming. Despite offers to purchase the land for housing development, Ivey just couldn’t think of selling the family land. Doing research before initiating the project, he decided the usual means of farming with millions of gallons annually of pesticides was not a road he wanted to follow. So instead Ivey took the leap of faith of beginning solar farming as a way to make the “best environmental use of the land.” 

“A power substation was put on our land in 1972 by Georgia Power,” Ivey said. “I realized in 2010 that I had a rare triple combination of fairly flat, cleared farming land that happened to be within a belt of good solar radiance, the financial capability to carry the idea forward and a direct connection point into the energy grid. Due to this rare combination, I could farm enough clean energy for about 7,000 homes annually.

Source: Walton Tribune