Upper Marlboro solar project seeks state approval for Croom Road site
A 3.9-megawatt solar project on Croom Road has entered state review, adding to a growing cluster of Upper Marlboro filings that raise land-use questions for nearby residents.
A 3.90-megawatt solar project at 11403 Croom Road has moved into Maryland Public Service Commission review, putting another Upper Marlboro parcel into a corridor already shaped by repeated solar filings. Croom Community Energy Initiative LLC filed Case 9881 on June 10, and the commission sent the application to a Public Utility Law Judge as part of the Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity process, the state approval required before an energy-generating station can be built in Maryland.
That review matters because the project is not just about power production. Maryland’s community solar program is designed to let residents and businesses subscribe to off-site solar arrays and receive bill credits, especially customers who cannot put panels on their own roofs. If Case 9881 advances, state regulators, and later local commenters in any public hearing, will decide whether the Croom Road site fits that model and whether the facility belongs on this stretch of Prince George’s County land.
The immediate local comparison is another Croom Road filing, Case 9743, for a 5-megawatt alternating-current array at 7704 Croom Road. That project sat in Agricultural Residential zoning, and state materials said 70.3 percent of the site was prime farmland or farmland of statewide importance. Those same filings also described the parcel as brownfield land with prior gravel mining, a combination that shows why Croom Road has become a land-use debate as much as an energy one: solar can reuse disturbed ground, but it can also displace agricultural acreage that nearby residents and planners may want preserved.
A second nearby proposal, Case 9837, pushed that pattern further. Filed Dec. 2, 2025, for 12201 Croom Road, it called for a 3.0-megawatt alternating-current facility in the Agricultural and Preservation zoning district and described the project as a Community Solar Energy Generating System delivering output to Maryland residents through the Potomac Electric Power Company grid. The applicant also identified Subscriber Organization Identification Number 24A3123980007529 for the 3.0-megawatt project.
For Prince George’s County, the larger question is whether Croom Road is becoming a solar cluster or a line in the sand. County and state agencies have been promoting rooftop and community solar through efforts such as Solarize Prince George’s, and Maryland says its community solar pilot produced 139 projects with 204 megawatts of operating capacity by June 30, 2024 before ending Dec. 31, 2024. Case 9881 now tests how far that policy can extend into a corridor where farmland, preservation zoning and reused industrial land all sit side by side.
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