Town unlikely to host solar farm

By Ben Orcutt - borcutt@nvdaily.com

FRONT ROYAL -- The head of the firm in partnership with the town's electricity provider says it's unlikely they will build a solar farm in Front Royal.

Scott Wiater, president of Gaithersburg, Md.-based Standard Energy LLC, said Friday that now that Front Royal is only considering purchasing one megawatt of power from a proposed solar project with AMP, it is doubtful the town would be the host site for a solar farm.

"I do believe that the size of that project has significantly been reduced," Wiater said. "I heard it's down to one megawatt. So at that point, I highly doubt that there would be a solar farm built in Front Royal. If they subscribe to the AMP agreement, then it would come from a host site within AMP's membership base."

Meanwhile, Wiater said that allegations that Standard Energy LLC may have offered Town Manager J. Michael Graham a bribe regarding a previous solar farm project are not true.

"It's unfortunate that not all the facts were presented and we would like to see all the facts brought to light," Wiater said. "It's unfounded and it just needs to go away."

The bribery allegation is the source of a $30 million lawsuit filed against the town, Vice Mayor Chris W. Holloway and Councilmen Carson C. Lauder Jr. and Thomas H. Sayre.

David W. Silek, of the Manassas law firm of Ours & Silek, filed the lawsuit July 15 in Warren County Circuit Court on behalf of SolAVerde LLC, Donald F. Poe and Gregory A. Horton.

In his filing, Silek says Horton and Poe are partners in SolAVerde. Horton is the owner of Arctic Air Refrigeration Inc. in Front Royal and Poe operates a local construction business, Silek says.

The plaintiffs were first defamed, Silek says, when a member of the Town Council leaked confidential documents to The Northern Virginia Daily in April.

The documents included an April 8 confidential memo from Town Attorney Thomas R. Robinett to the council. In the memo, Robinett refers to "Standard Energy/Solar/SolAVerde" offering 200 jobs and $1.2 million in incentives that were not in a bid for construction of a solar energy farm.

Also among the leaked documents was a memo from Megan C. Rahman, an attorney with the Richmond law firm of Troutman Sanders who specializes in white-collar crime. She notes that background provided by Robinett indicates that one of the three finalists in the bidding for the solar farm project "secretly offered incentives to the Town Manager that were not contained in its written response" to the request for proposals.

While it appears that Graham did not accept the offer, Rahman says that based on information provided by Robinett, it could be construed as a bribe. Graham has maintained that he was never offered a bribe.

Wiater said he also is president of Standard Solar, which also is a Maryland-based firm.

"First off, Standard Energy, Standard Solar and SolAVerde are all separate entities," Wiater said.

Standard Energy first began discussion with the town about a solar farm project in October, Wiater said.

"The initial discussions were for a sole source purchase-power agreement with Standard Energy for the solar farm," he said. "Prior to that, there were certain incentives as part of that proposal. We were talking about setting up a distribution center as part of our solar hub in Front Royal, which would have brought local jobs to the community. For using the [town's] distribution network, we were going to contribute some of the development funds to the EDA for an R&D technology incubator. The idea behind that was that technology would then feed our distribution center and bring new technology to the solar farm. That was the general concept of what was pitched."

However, once the town informed Standard Energy LLC that it was going to put out a request for proposals for a solar farm that would produce less than 10 megawatts of power, as opposed to 100 megawatts, Wiater said, "all of those incentives really went away."

Standard Energy LLC did submit a bid for the scaled-down project, which was ranked as the top bid, but like the 30-plus other firms that submitted bids, its bid was eventually rejected by the town.

"The town has never contacted us with any allegations of [a] bribe," Wiater said. "We just want the facts brought out to the open and that will clear our name. There was no response outside the RFP ever given to Front Royal."