Ohio’s biggest solar project finally gets permit after long legal limbo

Ohio’s largest solar and battery project can finally move forward after years of slogging through legal and regulatory challenges.

The Ohio Power Siting Board on Thursday approved a permit for Oak Run Solar, which will combine 800 megawatts of solar with 300 MW of battery storage. The Madison County development will also include an agrivoltaics component, with around 1,000 sheep grazing among the rows of panels.

Barring any more hiccups, Oak Run will become the rare example of a utility-scale solar farm able to succeed in a state that is notoriously hostile to renewable energy. Over the last dozen years, the Ohio legislature has more than doubled wind turbine setbacks, gutted clean energy standards, and created extra hurdles for wind and solar farms that don’t apply for fossil fuel developments. Since 2021, the Power Siting Board has also increasingly relied on local government opposition to deny solar permits.

Oak Run developer Savion first sought a permit in 2022 and won approval from the Power Siting Board in March 2024. But the government of Madison County and three of its townships appealed the decision to the Ohio Supreme Court later that year.

That put Oak Run in a holding pattern. Judges finally weighed in this spring, after Savion asked the court to expedite its ruling so that there would be enough time to start building the project and meet contract obligations to grid operator PJM Interconnection.

The court’s split decision rejected all objections to the project except one: a need for renderings of the expected visual impacts from the project’s substations, which step up the voltage of the electricity produced and feed it onto the grid. The court sent the case back to the Ohio Power Siting Board, telling it to more thoroughly consider evidence on that issue and then make a final call.

Savion submitted a report with pictures as well as testimony, which sufficiently convinced the board’s staff to recommend permit approval. The nonprofit Ohio Environmental Council and John Boeckl, a local resident who had intervened in the case, filed briefs in support of Oak Run, too. Madison County and the three townships still objected.

The board voted 7–2 to approve the project’s permit, with the nays coming from a county representative and a representative of the townships. Those two individuals got to vote as ad hoc board members under Senate Bill 52, a 2021 state law that gives local governments more say in blocking or siting renewables even though they do not have that authority over fossil fuel development.

The board specifically rejected the local governments’ argument that it should have made Oak Run go through extra procedural steps for meetings and notices, as if the company were filing a new permit application instead of additional evidence.

“The Court’s remand directive was narrow in scope,” the board’s order said. ​“The only question remaining was the substations’ specific visual impact.”

Clean energy advocates celebrated the approval, saying solar projects like Oak Run will help meet skyrocketing energy demand in Ohio and make power more affordable for households. Renewable energy is typically the cheapest, fastest way to add electrons to the grid, which is why more than 90% of new power generation built in the U.S. in recent years has been wind, solar, or batteries.

Oak Run’s win ​“emphasizes that bold renewable projects have a place in Ohio’s electric generation portfolio,” said Chris Tavenor, general counsel for the Ohio Environmental Council.

Samantha Sawmiller, senior development manager for Oak Run, said the company is pleased by the decision and thanked the Power Siting Board and others for their hard work to advance the project.

The local governments opposing Oak Run could seek reconsideration from the Power Siting Board or maybe even appeal the board’s decision to the Ohio Supreme Court again. Canary Media received no response to multiple requests for comment sent to their lawyer in the case, Jack Van Kley, who has often represented opponents to wind and solar projects. Nor did Madison County prosecutor Nicholas Adkins answer questions sent to his office.

Meanwhile, solar proponents are waiting on the Ohio Supreme Court to deliver another important ruling.

That case deals with Kingwood Solar, a 175-MW project in Greene County that was not subject to SB 52. The Power Siting Board rejected developer Vesper Energy’s application for the project in late 2022, saying unanimous local government opposition meant that Kingwood did not meet a statutory requirement that the array be in the public interest. The board largely ignored whether that opposition was based in fact or on misinformation, resistance to change, or political pressure. Kingwood met all other criteria for issuance of a permit.

The company appealed to Ohio’s high court, and the judges finally heard oral argument in early 2025.

The case could determine whether the Power Siting Board can continue to apply the state’s public interest requirement in a way that lets local opposition determine the fate of renewable energy projects.

The appeal has been pending since 2023. The developer asked the judges in February to speed up their ruling so that the company could meet a July deadline under its contract with PJM for eventually feeding power onto the grid, but the court refused. Some say that sluggishness and uncertainty are unnecessarily holding Ohio back from adding power to the grid just as the state needs it most.

“Given the electric affordability issues we’re seeing across Ohio and the nation, as well as the need for clean energy to counter the causes of climate change, we encourage the Ohio Supreme Court to decide any solar case before it as quickly as possible,” Tavenor said.