After recently receiving approval from a local planning board, the Radnor, Pennsylvania-based solar development company Community Energy is one step closer to constructing the first solar farm in Quinton Township, New Jersey.

The 1,800-panel Laurel Lake Solar Project is set to span 24 acres and produce enough energy to power 750 households annually. By contrast, the Trenton Solar Farm, which the Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) Company began building earlier this month, will generate enough electricity for roughly 200 homes each year.

The solar panels for the Laurel Lake Solar Project will be mounted as high as eight feet on land owned by Daniel and Mary Ann Pedrick — two local farmers whose farmland, according to Community Energy, is ideal to build on. According to the agreement, the company will lease the land for 30 years under the condition that, should Community Energy decide not to renew the lease at the end of the 30-year period, the land would be reverted back to its original state: farmland. The same promise was made to the local planning board members who on July 2 listened to the company’s site plans before approving the plans on August 10.

Margaret Maxwell-Mood, the board’s chairwoman, said the solar farm is something that Quinton Township is very much looking forward to, and that other municipalities should consider similar projects:

“They [Community Energy] did a very good job presenting the information to us and we truly grilled them about every possible repercussion. We were pretty impressed. One thing we really liked was generating pure, clean energy. We just couldn’t imagine why so many towns are beating clean energy down when, in fact, it’ll benefit our environment so greatly.”

The final step in gaining approval will likely come within the next few weeks, when the Quinton Township Committee will meet and review the plan before deciding whether or not to give it final approval. If the solar farm is built, the energy it produces will run through the Atlantic City Electric grid.