Sussex County, DE Solar Energy: Panel Permits (2026)

Added by Ord. No. 6 splits solar into two tracks. Subsection A covers "solar panels and similar uses that are accessory to or ancillary to the principal or permitted use on the same lot," meaning rooftop or small ground-mounted arrays that power a home, farm or business already on site; those are permitted in all districts, so no rezoning or conditional-use hearing is required, only the standard building permit. Subsection B reaches everything else, "all other solar panels, solar farms or solar arrays," and routes them into the conditional-use process, which the chapter's conditional-use framework runs through the Planning and Zoning Commission and County Council at a public hearing, plus the added site standards written into § 115-172I specifically for solar facilities.

A commercial solar farm sited on undeveloped acreage rather than serving an on-site use is the kind of project that falls into the conditional-use track; a homeowner's rooftop array or a farm's panel bank tied to its own barn does not. Sussex County's conditional-use uses elsewhere in the same Article, such as borrow pits and manufactured home parks, follow the same County Council approval pathway, underscoring that a large-scale solar array is treated as a discretionary land use rather than a permitted one.