The Champaign County Board voted 15 to 2 Thursday night to allow construction of a huge new solar panel farm on a site east of Sidney.  

Champaign County is the site of several proposed solar panel installations, but only one of them would go up on a landfill site. That could happen, under a lease agreement approved by the Urbana City Council at their meeting Monday night. 

Several proposals for solar farms have come before Champaign County officials this year. The biggest proposal by far will come to the county board in January, after winning approval from the county Zoning Board of Appeals Thursday night.

The University of Illinois does not need permission from Savoy village officials to build their new solar panel farm on Curtis Road, just outside village limits. But at a Savoy Village Board study session Wednesday night, university officials promised that the 50-acre facility would be a good neighbor.

The University of Illinois is planning a second solar farm on its Urbana campus that will be triple the size of the first one.