FAQs

Groveland Mine Solar will not be sited in the Groveland Mine Ponds area. The project will have zero impact on access to and enjoyment of the Groveland Ponds. All current DNR roads and trails will remain accessible, even during the project’s construction phase.

It is completely safe and common for properly tested former industrial sites to host developments such as Groveland Mine Solar. Circle Power Renewables has performed a number of environmental studies to confirm worker and local resident safety. Constructing solar arrays at Groveland Mine is safe and will not impact the area’s air or water quality. Circle Power Renewables will continue to work with township officials, the project’s contractors, and labor unions to ensure that Groveland Mine Solar is safe for workers and the community during construction and throughout the life of the project.

No part of Groveland Mine Solar will be sited on farmland. Groveland Mine Solar will be sited on public and private lands that include portions of the decommissioned Groveland Mine, which operated from the early 1950s until 1981 under the ownership of the Hanna Mining Company. The ground-mounted solar arrays will be constructed on the waste rock piles and tailings basins that are the byproducts of the mining and refinement processes used to produce iron ore pellets when Groveland Mine was in operation. Panels will also be located on the abandoned plant area. Brownfield sites like Groveland are often difficult to redevelop due to their previous use – but, through the installation of solar farms, they create taxable value for local entities and produce low-cost, renewable energy.

No solar panels will be located on wetlands. Initially, a portion of the Michigan DNR property made available for development included wetlands. However, after identifying wetlands through onsite surveys, Circle Power Renewables worked with the Michigan DNR to have the wetlands removed from the project’s option agreement.

The Michigan DNR manages 4.6 million acres of public land for the benefit of all Michiganders. In doing so, the DNR leases land for many types of industrial development, including gas and oil wells and processing facilities, pipelines and flowlines, mines, sand and gravel pits, asphalt plants, and cell phone towers. Such uses are carefully regulated, meeting high standards of environmental care and demonstrating the variety of state land uses that can benefit people and the economy.

Local officials need reliable, predictable revenue streams to make smart investments in services, education, equipment, and infrastructure as well as to save for a rainy day. To ensure that local taxing entities benefit from Groveland Mine Solar, Circle Power entered into property tax guaranty contracts with Felch, Norway, and Sagola Townships.

The contracts ensure that a minimum of $12.7 million will be paid locally over 30 years. The $12.7 million total is comprised of taxes paid to Dickinson County, Norway Township, Norway Vulcan-Area Schools (debt fund), Felch Township, Sagola Township, North Dickinson County Schools (sinking fund/bond) and the Dickinson-Iron Intermediate School District. The $12.7 million total does not include property taxes that do not result in local tax receipts, such as the State Education Tax.

The property tax guaranty contracts are simple agreements. Each Township’s contract has a schedule of annual minimum property tax payments to be made by the Project over 30 years. The annual minimum payments in all three contracts add up to $12.7 million. Each year, the project pays the greater of the minimum payment in the schedule or the actual property taxes assessed. Given this structure, the $12.7 million is a minimum of the aggregate payments to the local entities listed above. If property taxes exceed the minimum payments, the actual total will be greater than $12.7 million. Aggregate payments cannot be lower than $12.7 million per the contracts.

The guarantee is intended to prevent a future owner from challenging personal property tax assessments to reduce local property taxes, and also to insulate the townships from future disadvantageous changes to the tax rules that apply to how solar projects are taxed.

Once Groveland Mine Solar is constructed, it will operate for at least 30 years. The project has entered into a decommissioning agreement with the townships to ensure that when the project does reach the end of its useful life, funds are available to remove the solar facility and fully cover the project's cleanup costs. The decommissioning agreement, which binds any future owner, is a legally binding contract that imposes requirements on how the site will be restored at Groveland Mine Solar’s end-of-life. Bonding for the full cost of decommissioning will be based on a qualified, third-party estimate of the cost to decommission the site.

Circle Power and Civil & EnvironmentalConsultants (CEC), the project biologists, have consulted the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) on whether bats or any other protected species would be adversely impacted by Groveland Mine Solar. At the request of USFWS, CEC conducted onsite bat surveys and determined that there is limited bat habitat in the project area, and the few areas of potential habitat are of low quality. As a result, the USFWS found that the proposed project is compliant with the Natural Environmental Protection Act so long as appropriate consideration is included in the construction schedule to allow for potential bat activity. Specifically, the Project will only remove trees in the May through October period if a survey is performed in advance to confirm an absence of bats in trees slated for clearing. A survey is not required to clear trees during the months of November through April.

The tailings areas have been planted with a variety of species with limited success in sustained growth and the spoil piles around the mine are essentially rocks which may limit what can be grown but is helpful for vegetation management. If limited herbicide use is required to control invasive species, it would be done in compliance with all laws.

The project will connect to the electric grid via the Nordic Substation, which served the mine when it was in operation. Interconnection to the electric grid is controlled by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO). MISO operates transmission facilities from Manitoba to Louisiana with over 198,933 MWs (Nov 2022) of generation capacity in its footprint. No electric generating facility — whether it be coal, natural gas, or solar — is permitted to connect without meeting an extremely stringent set of safety requirements. During a process spanning several years, MISO studies the type and manner of the proposed interconnections of new generation capacity to ensure that the proposed systems meet the agency's rules. It takes an average of three to five years or more for a project to complete the MISO interconnection process.

The Upper Peninsula gets enough sun to make a large-scale solar farm like Groveland Mine solar an effective, cost-competitive method of producing electricity. Additionally, solar panels operate efficiently in cold temperatures. According to the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, Canada has 190 major solar energy projects producing power across the country.

Circle Power’s expertise is finding and developing suitable sites for renewable power generation. It is likely that Circle Power will transfer the completed project to a company that specializes in owning and operating power generating plans, which may include a regulated public utility.

When solar panels are blanketed with snow, they do not produce electricity. However, the loss of productivity on an annual basis is quite small. Solar panels shed snow effectively because they absorb the sun’s heat as well as its light. The panels are mounted at an angle, facing the sun, and they are slippery. Snow slides off quickly and prevents the panels from being covered for lengthy periods of time.

Large-scale solar farms like Groveland Mine Solar are among the lowest-cost ways of producing energy today. Since the 2010s, the cost to manufacture solar panels has decreased as their efficiency and ability to produce electricity has increased, and the technology is improving all the time. Ultimately, Circle Power Renewables must sell the electricity, which means its cost must be competitive with other sources of energy in the marketplace.

Solar energy is intermittent but extremely predictable. Utility companies and grid operators use that predictability to balance solar with other electricity generating resources to make sure customers' power stays on.