A draft recommendation calls for creating a Virginia advisory board that would regularize permitting of large solar and storage projects, to help guide the state toward meeting its clean energy goals.
The staff of the Virginia Commission on Electric Utility Regulation has issued a draft recommendation to involve the state in setting standards for siting and permitting of solar and storage.
The commission’s role is to support the state legislature by monitoring how the state’s electric utility law is implemented by the state regulatory body known as the State Corporation Commission (SCC).
Under Virginia law, the state’s largest electric utility, Dominion Energy, has a renewable portfolio standard of 23% this year, rising to 41% by 2030 and 100% by 2045, according to the NC Clean Energy Technology Center. The state’s smaller utilities have longer timelines.
Under the staff proposal, a new advisory board would consult with the SCC and other state agencies and provide local jurisdictions an opinion on whether a solar or storage project is a “critical interconnection project” of “statewide significance”—a standard the proposal defines as including a capacity greater than 20 MW and a location within 7 miles of an interconnection point.
If a local jurisdiction were to deny a permit to a solar or storage project that the advisory board had deemed critical, the project developer could, under the proposal, appeal to the SCC.
The staff proposal also calls for state agencies to convene a workgroup to develop a statewide ordinance for siting, permitting and zoning of solar and storage facilities. Such an ordinance would allow localities to make unique decisions within a set range of values regarding a number of issues: setback requirements, fencing, project height, visual impacts, lighting, erosion and sediment, impervious surfaces, soil, vegetation, wildlife, workforce, and decommissioning.
Under the proposal, the state would also model for each of the state’s regions a “meaningful annual contribution to clean energy generation, efficiency measures and storage, such that statewide clean energy goals can be met by 2050.”
Following that proposed modeling effort, the state’s planning district commissions would then be required to create regional energy plans that “demonstrate a meaningful contribution” to state energy goals and forecasted energy growth, consistent with the state’s renewable portfolio standards (RPS). The proposal calls for $4 million in state funds to support development of regional energy plans.
If by mid-2027 the state’s RPS goals were not being met, the proposal calls for the SCC to decide whether the advisory board’s decisions regarding critical interconnection projects shall be binding instead of advisory, in which case the board would be renamed simply as a board, not an advisory board.
The proposal’s final item calls for Virginia’s public university system to set up a Virginia Clean Energy Technical Assistance Center, to provide assistance to government, nonprofit and for-profit entities.
