Dominion Energy converts closed landfill into solar farm in Albemarle County

ALBEMARLE COUNY, Va. (WVIR) - A former landfill in Albemarle County is now generating clean energy through a new solar farm.

More than 7,000 solar panels sit at the old Ivy Landfill, converting sunlight into electricity. A spokesperson said the site marks Dominion Energy’s first solar farm of this kind in Virginia.

“This is a really exciting trend for us because it’s an eco-friendly use that is on a piece of land that has little to no options in terms of use,” said Tim Eberly, spokesperson for Dominion Energy.

The company is building solar facilities on previously disturbed land, which can include mining sites or closed landfills. At the Ivy site, nothing can be built into the ground. Instead, panels sit anchored with rocks on top of the covered waste buried below.

“We love to develop clean energy and carbon-free energy for our customers, but to be able to pair this with finding a new use for, essentially, breathing new life into a property, is really exciting for us,” Eberly said.

Eberly said the 14-acre solar site can power up to 750 homes — and is on the smaller scale of clean energy projects by Dominion. He described that the project represents a step toward creating more renewable sources to meet a growing energy demand across the state.

“We’re expecting our energy demand to double over the next 20 years,” Eberly said. “To meet that energy demand, we have this all of the above strategy, where we essentially need to develop new power generation from all sources. That’s offshore wind, that’s solar, that’s natural gas, we also need energy storage to pair with that. And solar is a major, significant piece of that strategy — and this is one of dozens of new solar facilities that we’re going to be developing around the state in the coming decades to essentially meet that energy demand for our customers.”

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