Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

A solar project that has yet to start construction in Lunenburg will be sold by developers.

Apex Clean Energy developers of Dogwood Solar intend to sell to Summit Ridge Energy.

According to Matt Gooch, attorney for Apex Clean Energy Summit Ridge Energy intends to purchase all the membership interests of Apex and assume its obligations under the Siting Agreement and Conditional Use Permit conditions.

According to county documents, the Board of Supervisors’ consent is required for the sale or transfer of the Project or the ownership of the Developer.

Supervisors have agreed to the transfer.

Before the board’s decision, Garren Bischoff with Summit Ridge Energy presented an overview of the request and his company’s intentions.

His presentation reviewed the company’s financial partnerships, past track record in the solar market, and experience in Virginia, and introduced their team.

Bischoff said that his company is ready and willing to take over the project and adhere to all the conditions previously approved for Apex Energy.

According to Supervisor Wayne Hoover, the board’s finance committee was provided a proprietary copy of the recent financial audit of Summit Ridge Energy’s finances. “Summit Ridge seems to be a strong company and the Finance Committee does not have any concerns,” Hoover said.

Early this year supervisors did have concerns and disapproval of a previous transfer of Dogwood Solar due to having not enough information about a potential buyer.

During the December 2022 BOS meeting, officials with Apex Clean Energy addressed the board seeking a vote of the consent of its intent to sell Dogwood Solar to Dimension Renewable Energy.

However, that was met with disapproval by several members of the BOS because, according to board member Robert Zava, there was not enough information about Dimension Renewable Energy.

During that meeting, the BOS was made aware that Apex and Dimension had been discussing a possible project purchase for several months.

“Why wasn’t the board notified of this,” said Supervisor Alvester Edmunds. “You could have come to us then. We need to know more about Dimension before doing this.”

As both Apex and Dimension representatives continued to push for consent approval, Supervisor Wayne Hoover spoke up.

“Honestly, I’m ticked off at this,” Hoover said. “You worked on this for months from May until December, and you want a decision from us in 10 minutes?” “I support this (solar), but I’m not going to vote for a company when I don’t know anything about them. We are not against this … but we need to be informed.”

Ultimately, the BOS decided to table the decision on the consent and Dimension eventually withdrew its intent to purchase Dogwood Solar.