Isle of Wight County is looking to get ahead of the curve on battery storage systems by preemptively passing an ordinance to regulate the rows of shipping container-sized units that are emerging in other Virginia localities.

The county’s Planning Commission took its first look on June 24 at the draft language, which Community Development Director Amy Ring said is modeled off similar ordinances in Amelia and Hanover counties and the city of Chesapeake, as well as an ordinance regulating solar farms Isle of Wight amended in 2023.

Developing a battery storage ordinance before the issue hits home had been the top recommendation of a five-member energy task force that presented its findings in 2024 after meeting monthly for a year.

A battery energy storage system, or BESS, typically consists of several rows of rectangular outdoor units, each containing modules of individual battery cells that would be stacked similar to towers at a data center. They’re intended to boost grid reliability by charging during periods of low electricity demand and sending out the stored power at peak demand. BESS projects may, but don’t have to be, co-located with a solar farm.

Isle of Wight has yet to see a zoning or permit application for a BESS project, but one is proposed in neighboring Surry County, which in April adopted its own BESS ordinance at the request of the proposed project’s developer, Idaho-based Clenera.

The Isle of Wight task force report contends a “thoughtful and safe investment in battery storage will be a positive for the county as battery storage will dramatically increase the efficiency of solar energy and reduce the overall acreage requirements of future projects.”

Isle of Wight’s proposed ordinance would define a BESS as “one or more devices, assembled together, capable of storing energy in order to supply electrical energy at a future time, not to include a standalone 12-volt car battery or an electric motor vehicle.” They would be classified as a major utility service under civic use types.

The draft ordinance would mandate BESS projects be located at least 5,000 feet, or nearly a mile, from public roads and property lines unless the Board of Supervisors approves a conditional use permit allowing a lower setback, provided the project is no closer than 1,000 feet. That particular provision is copied from Amelia County’s ordinance.

What the Planning Commission will need to decide is whether to allow battery projects “by right” in any zoning districts, where no Planning Commission or Board of Supervisors approval would be needed, versus requiring developers to go through the conditional use permit process and associated public hearings.

Commissioner Jennifer Boykin said she would prefer to not allow by-right battery storage in any zoning district.

Another decision the Planning Commission faces is whether to treat battery storage sites the same as solar farms as it relates to provisions of the county’s solar ordinance. A provision of that ordinance caps the cumulative “prime farmland” devoted to solar at 2%, or 2,446 acres, all of which is already spoken for with last year’s approval of the 240-megawatt Sycamore Cross solar farm proposed for over 2,000 acres at the westernmost edge of the Isle of Wight-Surry border.

BESS projects “should absolutely fall under that cap,” Commissioner Brian Carroll said.

The draft would further mandate that the project be “completely surrounded by a berm” and that projects be “developed in collaboration with technical experts and first responders to utilize technology-appropriate best practices for safe energy storage systems.”

Battery storage systems have become controversial for their fire risk. One of the challenges the task force identified is that emergency preparedness hasn’t kept pace with advances in solar farms and on-site battery storage. The task force last year said protocol to date has been to wait for an electrical fire to burn itself out.

The developer of the proposed 32½-acre “Bear Island” BESS in Surry says that if the units fail, they’re designed to do so safely, and contends the fire risk is minimal. The Surry project would use a battery management system programmed to keep the units at an acceptable temperature.

Once Isle of Wight’s Planning Commission decides on final verbiage, the draft ordinance would need to be advertised for a public hearing, after which the commissioners would vote on a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors, which would need to hold its own hearing before taking a final vote.