Planners, Supervisors Look Ahead to Large-Scale Energy Storage

BY RENSS GREENE rgreene@loudounnow.com

As Loudoun supervisors prepare to dive into an overhaul of the county’s zoning ordinance, they are grappling with how to regulate what might be the next big thing: utility-scale energy storage.

The county Planning Commission wrestled with how to regulate industrial-scale energy storage facilities as it worked on writing the new zoning code. A report to the county Transportation and Land Use committee notes governments are still grappling with how to regulate the technology.

While industrial-scale energy storage has been undertaken in long-proven forms for more than a century, such as its most common form pumped-storage hydroelectricity, utilities are now rolling out newer technologies such as massive banks of batteries. The draft zoning ordinance defines those facilities as having capacities of at least 600kWh—roughly six of the batteries in the newest Tesla Model S or Model X. Although the Planning Commission voted to allow energy storage by-right in some industrial districts, county planners have recommended first hiring a consultant to help write new fire safety rules and building codes.

The Fire Marshal’s Office previously warned the Planning Commission that energy storage facilities require continued from page 8 beyond,” Loudoun Hunger Relief President and CEO and Loudoun Human Services Network immediate past chair Jennifer Montgomery said.

Supervisors also voted to redistribute the $102,453.33 awarded to INMED in the most recent round of county nonprofit grants to the next-highest scoring grant applicants, Legacy Farms and ENDependence.

INMED had long been a major recipient of county nonprofit funding; a decision this year to cancel upwards of $300,000 of county-administered federal Community Development Block Grant funding for INMED contributed to the nonprofit’s sudden collapse. It also reduced specialized types of fire extinguishers and firefighter training, and permitting them in more rural areas of the county would pose an additional risk if water is not readily available.

It bears many of the same hallmarks of the data center industry in its early days in Loudoun—an emerging industrial technology that employs relatively few people on-site, and which planners are still figuring out how to regulate.

Supervisor Caleb E. Kershner (R-Catoctin) during a June 21 Transportation and Land Use Committee meeting said he sees it as the next big thing.

“This, to me, could be the next data center wave of the future, quite frankly,” he said. “Simply because it’s very inexpensive in terms of the burden on the county, there are potentially a lot of various areas that we could put these energy storage facilities, and I foresee that maybe we may at some point want to take some time and work on this and give this to the Planning Commission to flesh out significantly.”

Dominion Virginia’s plans for a 100-megawatt solar array on Dulles Airport property also include a 50-megawatt battery system. It will be the largest and one of the first such projects in Virginia; the utility today has a 12 megawatt battery facility in Powhatan, VA and 2 megawatt batteries in New Kent and Hanover counties, and has approval to build a 20 megawatt facility in Chesterfield County. n the number of people that funding would help by thousands.

Previously the majority of that funding went to local nonprofits. In 2022, supervisors granted INMED $83,095 in Community Development Block Grant funding to support the Healthy Families Loudoun program, serving an estimated 265 people, and $221,390 to support the nonprofit’s Sterling-based Family and Youth Opportunity Center, serving an estimated 2,515 people.

This year, supervisors instead directed most of the block grant funding to county government programs, including $150,000 that is expected to help one family achieve homeownership, and $772,000 to go to a developer seeking to develop affordable housing in the county, with its impact uncertain. n