Charlotte’s solar plan gets a do-over

Today is Monday, March 30, 2026. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C.

Good morning. It’s Tony. Although all North Carolina teams are sadly out of the NCAA Tournament — surely everyone is torn up about Duke’s shocking loss — there’s still local basketball excitement … in The Ledger’s NCAA bracket pool. Reader Maureen Krueger is in the lead, followed by Jim Marascio and a three-way tie for third. Speaking of things that are electrifying, writer Mika Travis takes a look this morning at the city of Charlotte’s efforts to supply solar energy to hit sustainability goals. And more!

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by Mika Travis

A massive solar farm underway in Davidson County could play a key role in Charlotte’s push to reach its sustainability goals. 

The city aims to power all city-owned buildings with zero-carbon energy by 2030, and renewable energy certificates from the Denton solar farm will help them reach that goal, said Heather Bolick, the city’s chief sustainability and resiliency officer.

But the effort comes with some recent baggage. 

While there are high hopes for the new project, the city had to learn some hard lessons from another similar project that was quietly canceled in Statesville.

Announced in 2020 as a partnership between Duke Energy and solar developers Ecoplexus and Carolina Solar Energy, the Olin Creek Solar project was expected to be finished by 2022. Instead, delays piled up, and by 2024, the solar farm was canceled, both Duke Energy and the city confirmed.

Charlotte officials say that first attempt is shaping how they approach the Denton project —an 80-megawatt solar farm expected to be completed by the end of 2027. Although it’s under construction, the new project has its own challenges.

The Olin Creek Solar Farm was planned for Statesville in Iredell County, off Highway 21 and Tomlin Mill Road, about 40 miles north of Charlotte. The city said that the 35-megawatt solar farm would offset 17% of Charlotte’s power usage and bring it 25% closer to its goal of powering all city-owned buildings with zero-carbon energy by 2030. It would have saved the city $100,000 annually in energy costs.

But the project, which was first approved in 2019, never progressed past its permit application, according to an Iredell County spokesperson.

Ecoplexus said factors such as inflation, interest rates, commodity prices, supply chain issues and tariffs were to blame for the delay.

“This sort of multi-year delay, multi-year process, pulling out of a project and moving along with a different project, that’s not uncommon in the renewable energy industry,” said Harrison Fell, an associate professor at N.C. State University whose research focuses on environment, energy and natural resource economics.

In fall 2022, Ecoplexus told the city the project would fail unless it increased the agreed-upon price and sold the project to another developer. Instead of saving money on electricity, the project would instead cost Charlotte an extra $750,000 annually.

City Council approved this price increase, and Ecoplexus sold the project to Pine Gate Renewables, an Asheville-based solar developer. The city said it would not spend any money until the project finished construction, as per the agreement, and Pine Gate said it expected to begin construction at the end of 2023.

But this developer had its own struggles, according to bankruptcy court documents filed in November. They included the same economic factors that Ecoplexus dealt with — inflation, interest rates and tariffs on solar modules and other materials — but Pine Gate also faced more recent regulatory changes from President Donald Trump‘s administration, including the elimination of a 30% federal tax credit for new solar projects.

Pine Gate requested an additional cost increase for the Olin Creek project, but it could not reach an agreement with the city, Bolick said. Its contract with the City of Charlotte was dissolved on March 28, 2024, and the project was quietly canceled. Charlotte did not spend any money on the project.

Pine Gate’s challenges eventually led it to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2025. The developer did not respond to The Ledger’s requests for comment by deadline.

“Right now, we’ve seen an uptick in bankruptcies for solar development firms nationwide,” Fell said. He said there was growth in the solar industry under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, but more recent tariff policies and the rollback of green subsidies have hurt solar developers financially. 

Despite continued uncertainty about clean energy investments, Olin Creek’s cancellation is not expected to deter Charlotte’s renewable energy goals, city officials say.

In fact, Bolick called the project’s cancellation a “blessing in disguise,” since it paved the way for an even larger solar farm to take its place: the 80-megawatt South Davidson Solar Project in Denton, 65 miles northeast of Charlotte. 

“It’s a very complex process, and this is not something we do every day,” Bolick said. “We definitely had to learn a lot,” like how to model future costs and "making sure we have stopgap measures in place to protect the city and our residents, our taxpayers ... in case of default."

She added that the city partnered with the Rocky Mountain Institute for the Olin Creek project, which helped educate city staff on green tariffs and model costs and savings over time.

Cypress Creek Renewables, the developer of the Denton project, said that it’s facing the same industry-wide pressures as Olin Creek. Strategies such as “proactive design optimization, refined procurement strategies, and diligent cost‑management efforts” have helped them keep the South Davidson project moving forward, Cypress Creek told The Ledger in an email.

“The solar industry is not, by any means, completely down-and-out,” Fell said. “We’re still building a lot of solar, and the economics of solar in certain places is still very competitive with other generation sources.”

Charlotte is now about 58% of the way to its goal of powering all municipal buildings with zero-carbon energy, Bolick said, and the Denton project will get the city the rest of the way.

But Denton residents are less enthusiastic. In Facebook posts, residents have expressed concern that Charlotte will reap all the benefits of the project, while they deal with any land damage.

While Davidson County had already approved a special use permit for about 500 acres of the solar farm, a permit for an additional 85 acres was brought to the Town of Denton for approval last March, since Davidson County placed a moratorium on approving any future solar development at the end of 2024. 

After residents pushed back against the solar farm, Denton denied the request to approve the additional 85 acres. 

But the South Davidson solar farm filed a lawsuit, saying the evidence presented by residents was insufficient, according to a town meeting last October. The solar farm also found discrepancies within the town’s land-use and development ordinances.

To avoid the lawsuit, the Town of Denton decided in a vote to reverse its denial and approve the land for the solar farm. As part of the deal, the solar farm offered greater protection to allay Denton residents’ concerns, such as adding additional vegetative buffers and fencing to make the project less visible.

“Just because we don’t necessarily want to see something happen doesn’t mean that it's not in the best interest of the town,” said Denton Town Attorney Misti Whitman at the meeting. The Board of Commissioners had previously expressed that they didn’t support the solar farm. 

“You have to put your personal feelings aside and do what’s best for the town,” Whitman said. 

Mika Travis is a freelance journalist based in Charlotte. She graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 2024. You can reach her at [email protected]

A new benchmark to assess how well North Carolina’s counties are faring on four economic metrics shows Mecklenburg County is, perhaps unsurprisingly, largely outperforming most of the 99 other counties. 

But one local suburban county actually outperformed Mecklenburg in the most recent ranking, speaking to the economic gains that have fanned out to non-core counties as cities like Charlotte grow.

The N.C. Department of Commerce’s County Economic Vitality Index (EVI), launched in February, is intended to give a county-level look at trends in unemployment, wages, median household income and educational attainment.

On March 20, Commerce released an EVI dashboard that shows how these scores across N.C. have changed between 2010 and 2024 (the most recent year in which data is available).

But counties outside of Mecklenburg are gaining, too — and, especially since 2020, at a faster clip than Mecklenburg.

“It was interesting to see the growth of the suburbs, something we know that has been occurring for quite some time,” said Jeff DeBellis, director of economic and policy analysis at the Commerce Department’s Labor and Economic Analysis Division (LEAD), which developed the tool. “When you look at the counties that have changed their score in the past 15 years, the fastest-growing were small, rural counties out west, where we’ve seen second homeownership and people retiring, and we’ve [also] seen a lot of that in the suburbs.”

The highest-scoring counties are, perhaps unsurprisingly, around North Carolina’s major metro areas. DeBellis noted in a post about the EVI that much of the improvement across the state has been driven by a tightening labor market and growth in high school graduation rates, while persistent gaps in wages and household income continue to constrain performance in many rural and smaller metro counties. —Ashley Fahey

Events submitted by readers to The Ledger’s events board:

FRIDAY: “Weekly Meeting of Senior Scholars,” 10-11 a.m., at the Howard R. Levine Center for Education (The Pearl), 915 Pearl Park Way. Join the members of Senior Scholars as John Gaertner, a consultant on energy and climate change, explains how the emerging science of chaos and complexity can be used to solve important societal problems as well as highly technical issues. $5 for guests. $25 annual membership.

APRIL 18: “Mardi Gras Casino Night for Sight,” 7-11 p.m., at Griffith Hall, 3000 S. Tryon St. Join Metrolina Association for the Blind (MAB) and the Charlotte Area Delta Gamma Alumnae for a high-spirited and fun-filled evening benefitting MAB! There will be live music, New Orleans-style food, beads and masks. Black tie optional. There will be casino-style games, but no cash prizes will be issued. $78/ticket.

APRIL 21: “The New Capital Cycle: AI, Capex and the Bond Market Boom,” 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., at The Charlotte City Club, 121 West Trade St., 31st floor. Join Charlotte Economics Club for an in-depth discussion on the forces reshaping today’s capital markets with Guy LeBas, who serves as Chief Fixed Income Strategist and Head of Fixed Income for Janney Capital Management. Registration will end on April 17. Chicken Entree will be served. $60 for members. $90 for nonmembers.

APRIL 23: “Fourth Annual ‘Perfectly Paired’ Wine Tasting & Auction,” 5:30-8 p.m., at the Duke Mansion, 400 Hermitage Rd. This signature fundraiser supports four Charlotte-area children’s nonprofits. Guests will enjoy a curated wine tasting, supper-by-the-bite offerings prepared by The Duke Mansion culinary team and both silent and live auctions featuring travel experiences, golf, spa and dining packages. $125/ticket.

➡️ List your event on the Ledger events board.