St. Tammany Parish, LA Solar Energy: Panel Permits (2026)

Sec. 400-8(OO) of the parish's Unified Development Code creates a dedicated permitting track for ground-mounted solar energy systems that exceed "small-scale," meaning medium-scale (over 1,750 square feet of collector surface) and large-scale (over 40,000 square feet) arrays; systems that are building-integrated, building-mounted, roof-mounted, or classified as small-scale instead stay under ordinary building, electrical, and zoning compliance.

An application for a covered ground-mounted system must include a scaled site plan stamped by a civil engineer showing every existing and proposed structure, points of ingress and egress, internal circulation, parking, and a construction traffic plan. The applicant must also comply with all Chapter 300 building-permit requirements, and civil plans submitted for review must carry a Louisiana-licensed engineer's stamp. Beyond the standard parish fee schedule in Article XVII, the code layers on a review fee of $50.00 per acre, capped at a maximum of $10,000.00 regardless of project size.

Once issued, a solar permit is not open-ended: it expires five years after issuance unless construction has already begun. A permit holder facing delay can apply to the director of permits and inspections for a single extension of up to two additional years, but only on written proof of good-faith progress, such as an active utility-interconnection application, a signed power purchase agreement, or comparable evidence the project is moving forward. If the permit lapses without an extension, the applicant has to reapply from scratch. The same section separately sets a 15-foot maximum panel height, a 100-foot perimeter setback with a 50-foot natural buffer inside it, and a 300-foot separation from existing residential dwellings for the underlying ground-mounted system itself.