Host a Solar Farm

Why consider hosting a solar farm?

There are several advantages to entering a land lease partnership with ReVision:

1. Partner with a local, 100% employee-owned, trusted company with a 20-year track record.
2. Receive reliable, competitive annual lease payments for the 25+ year lifetime of the project.
3. Get long-term support from our dedicated solar land development teams.
4. Bring the environmental and financial benefits of solar to local communities.

Recent policy changes, most notably New Hampshire’s passage of HB 281, allows solar developers to partner with landowners to build larger solar farms. This economy of scale means greater opportunities and financial benefits for municipalities, towns, and schools to access solar arrays of up to 5 megawatts in size, up to 25 acres.

Maine solar policy changed in 2019 to allow projects of up to 5 megawatts (previously projects were capped at 1 megawatt).

ReVision Energy has many years of experience building and maintaining solar projects of this magnitude (between 1 and 5 Megawatts, typically 5 to 25 acres in size) and is committed to forming new land host partnerships that allow landowners to take advantage of these new policies.

Who uses the energy generated at the solar farm?

ReVision Energy’s dedicated solar consultants across the company work with electric customers who need offsite solar farms to generate their electricity. For example, a school interested in solar might not have a feasible roof for solar panels. That school could instead have their solar array built on an offsite solar farm located on your land.

The customers using the electricity from your solar farm will be located within your utility’s territory and could be:

• Municipalities of all sizes – cities, towns, etc.
• Water districts and schools
• Businesses
• Nonprofits with sizable electric loads
• Individual residents, including low-to-moderate income families

What kind of land is ideal for hosting a solar farm?

Our team takes the time to consider and understand your goals and long-term plans. We will review your parcel of land with publicly available environmental data initially to ensure there is a potential path to hosting a solar farm on your land. We aren’t going to tie up your land for the sake of a sales goal.

We look at the following criteria when we evaluate land for a solar lease:

• Three Phase Power Lines will always have a T bar and three lines running parallel to each other along the street. Accessibility: close to a public access road
• Size: 5-25 acres of available space for the solar farm
• Land type: open land is optimal, but forested land is also possible
• Dryness: upland with no wetlands is optimal, but isolated wetlands may be possible
• Topography: flat or gently rolling with slopes <15% and southerly facing is optimal
• Location: Near 3-phase power (utility lines along the street)

How does a land lease work?

We need land on which to build a solar farm. This means a solar developer and a landowner need to agree on the terms of a solar land lease. Through the lease, a landowner makes a suitable portion of their property available for the development, construction, and operation of a solar farm. The landowner receives a predictable, annually increasing lease payment based on the generating capacity of the solar farm. The landowner is not responsible for maintaining the system and land in the lease area.

At ReVision, we typically offer leases for 25 years with two 5-year extension opportunities.

Land hosts are crucial to New England's solar future. To achieve our states’ climate goals and combat rising electric costs, ReVision Energy is focused on making solar energy more accessible to our communities. Building large solar projects that benefit entire communities can only happen when we partner with local landowners to host these projects. 

Land leasing is also an important part of growing access to solar energy.

Not all sites are ideal for solar. Under new solar policies, schools, nonprofits, and other organizations that are unable to install solar on their own property can save money on their electric bill with an offsite solar farm.

Solar farms built on leased land are also an opportunity to support local working farmers. Farming is a slim margin business at the best of times, and is especially stressed now in an era of punishing tariffs and escalating fuel costs. In this context, solar farms offer an attractive, low-impact revenue source for farmers and other landowners.

However, with this exciting opportunity comes potential pitfalls, especially from improper planning and poor support from solar developers looking for land. ReVision has been installing and maintaining residential and largescale solar projects for 20 years.

As a local, employee-owned company with employees who live right here in Maine and New Hampshire, we are committed to making sure solar built here serves our local communities.

Since the beginning of community solar farms in New England, we have been partnering with landowners to develop impactful and sustainable community solar projects, including large 1-5 megawatt projects that bring clean solar power to entire towns or communities.

Our experience in building beneficial, sustainably developed community solar projects has led us to establish a robust land host program that:

• Provides a reliable, annually increasing income to you for 25-35 years
• Uses part of your land for solar while you continue your current land uses, such as farming or forest management, on the rest of your land
• Supports the landowner for the duration of the project: we carry the full scope of the project from land leasing to install to maintenance
• Helps increase Maine and New Hampshire’s independence from polluting fossil fuels that contribute to health issues like asthma and the extreme weather events we’ve all witnessed in recent years

We have years of experience and a commitment to excellence.

Each of our dedicated employee-owners is committed to responsibly spreading the economic and environmental opportunities unlocked by Maine and New Hampshire’s solar policies and delivering the benefits to local residents and communities.

Unlike out-of-state developers, we have a vested interest in seeing our local communities prosper because we live and work here. Everyone you’ll meet at our company is literally an owner. We are driven to do this work because we want to see Maine and New Hampshire transition away from fossil fuels, not because conditions looked ideal on an Excel spreadsheet.

We’re driven by our mission – to make life better by building a just and equitable electric future – but also to support you, the landowner, in accomplishing your goals around managing your land for the long-term, whether that be for conservation, working farm or forest, or more.

If you are interested in earning additional income for your family while helping us grow New England's clean, affordable energy future, please fill out the form below. A member of our Land Leasing team will be in touch shortly to review your goals and property. Thank you! 

Name

Contact info

Available Land Address

(The land needs to be located in Maine or New Hampshire.)

What is the size of available land?

(we are looking for sites that can host 3+ acre solar farms)

What's the current land cover of the property?

(an open site is ideal, but we can clear forested sites, too)

How close are the nearest power lines?

(we install grid-tied systems, which means they must be located near the existing grid)

Are those power lines three phase service?

(the scale of projects we build generally require three phase service to operate)

Does the property contain significant wetlands, or is it subject to shoreland zoning?

(wetland and shoreland areas typically represent sensitive and valuable habitats, which limit the development potential of a site)

What questions do you have about hosting a solar farm?