The developer of a battery energy storage system proposed for Surry County says the 12- to 18-month construction process would generate far fewer trucks traveling to and from the site than Surry has seen from recently approved solar farms.

The individual battery cells, modules, rack and battery management system that would be used in the facility proposed for Surry would also each be certified under the latest National Fire Protection Agency’s standards for the industry, representatives of the project’s Idaho-based developer, Clenera, told attendees at an April 30 open house at the Surry County Community Center. It would also see less construction traffic than a typical solar farm.

Clenera has proposed a 20-acre facility off White Marsh Road capable of storing up to 320 megawatt hours, which would equate to four hours of 75-megawatt output. 

At the request of Clenera, county supervisors voted April 3 to approve a zoning ordinance amendment that would allow and regulate battery storage facilities on agricultural-rural or industrial-zoned parcels by conditional use permit. Clenera still needs to go through the conditional use permit approval process for its specific project, which will entail hearings and votes by the county’s Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.

The shipping container-sized battery units have become controversial for their fire risk. The Surry site has “been designed to fail safely” with automated fire suppression technology and “does not require manual firefighting operations, therefore, in the unlikely event of a fire, an Emergency Response Plan will be approved prior to construction,” the company’s literature states.

Ed Rumler, director of development for Clenera, also told just over a dozen attendees that the site would generate roughly one-30th of the construction traffic at a typical solar farm. Traffic impacts from solar farm construction have been a sticking point for opponents of new solar farms, particularly in Surry, which in February voted to reject its 125-acre share of the Sycamore Cross solar farm proposed to span more than 2,000 acres across the westernmost edge of the Isle of Wight-Surry county line. Isle of Wight approved its share of Sycamore Cross last year.

Clenera officials say the Surry battery facility, which would be named Bear Island Battery Storage, isn’t being developed in connection with Sycamore Cross or any other existing or proposed solar farms. They say the project’s smaller footprint compared to a solar farm is what allows for fewer trucks traveling in and out of the construction site.

Assuming Bear Island is approved, construction likely wouldn’t begin for another two to  two-and-a-half years, company officials said. The exact number of battery units is undetermined and will depend on whether the batteries are made by Tesla or another manufacturer.

Dominion Energy’s 2024 integrated resource plan, filed Oct. 15 with the State Corporation Commission, calls for 12,000 additional megawatts from new solar farms and 4,500 megawatts of new battery storage over the next 15 years to meet the Virginia Clean Economy Act’s mandate that the utility transition to 100% carbon-free energy sources by 2045.

Each battery unit would consist of individual battery cells that get placed into modules that are stored in racks similar to server towers at a data center. Those racks and a battery management system programmed to keep the units at an acceptable temperature then would be placed into the final shipping container-sized outdoor units.

Clenera says battery storage arrays increase the reliability of the power grid amid rising demand for electricity, which a Dec. 9 Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee, or JLARC, report to the General Assembly says is being driven by the proliferation of data centers. Most of the state’s data centers are concentrated in northern Virginia, though a data center campus that would eventually be powered by on-site small, modular nuclear reactors is proposed for land adjacent to Dominion Energy’s Surry nuclear plant.

Rumler told the supervisors at a recent meeting that the batteries would charge during periods of low demand, such as the early morning hours, and send out the stored power when there’s high demand, typically between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.