Iron County, UT Outdoor Lighting: Dark Sky Rules (2026)

Iron County Code Chapter 17.33 makes solar power plants a conditional use, reviewed case by case, and its visual appearance standards address lighting directly. Towers and other tall solar-plant structures may not be lighted at all unless the FAA requires it for aviation safety, and where FAA lighting is required it must be the red, intermittent, glowing style rather than the white strobe style, unless the applicant discloses and justifies a different choice through the review process. Beyond FAA-mandated warning lights, lighting of the solar power plant and its accessory structures is capped at the minimum necessary, and the county can require full cut-off, dark-sky-compliant fixtures when it determines that step is needed to mitigate visual impacts on neighboring land.

The same section also bars any solar power plant from producing glare that would be a nuisance to occupants of neighboring properties or to people traveling on nearby roads. Iron County applies an identical minimum-necessary, full-cut-off standard to accessory structures and substations at commercial wind energy projects under Chapter 17.34, so the dark-sky expectation is not unique to solar. Because both chapters route the lighting condition through the conditional use permit process rather than a fixed code minimum, the exact fixture specification is set project by project as a binding condition of that approval.