A pair of bills progressing through the Virginia General Assembly would fast-track adding battery energy storage to existing solar farms.
SB 443, from Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William County, and HB 891, from Del. Irene Shin, D-Fairfax County, would allow battery storage to be added as an accessory use on any land where a local government has given the OK for a utility-scale solar power facility.
Last week, McPike’s bill passed the Senate 26-13, while a House of Delegates committee advanced Shin’s bill to the full House on a vote of 17-4.
Battery energy storage systems store electricity during low-demand times when it’s cheaper to produce and deploy it during high-demand times when it would otherwise be more expensive. While batteries can store electricity produced through any means, advocates often tout them as a way to help mitigate the intermittent nature of solar power generation.
“Virginia, as you all know, we are facing a near-term energy reliability crisis and legislation like this is absolutely critical to help solving it,” Shin said during a Jan. 30 House committee meeting.
During recent legislative committee meetings on the bills, supporters said that battery storage can be built and connected to the electric grid quickly. They emphasized that any battery storage projects added to solar facilities would still have to meet regulations regarding building codes, the environment and fire safety.
Furthermore, the bills would apply only to land that already has received local permits or other approval for utility-scale solar facilities. It would not give an automatic green light to proposals for standalone battery storage sites.
“This is a very limited approach that can add significant capacity to the grid and makes the most of existing infrastructure and the land that is already under permit without disturbing new farm and forest land,” said Philip Scarange, representing the energy developer AES.
Solar panels being built on farm and forest land is one aspect that opponents of utility-scale solar often object to, along with the perceived negative impacts of solar on rural aesthetics, property values and the environment.
A utility-scale solar facility is generally defined as having a capacity of 1 megawatt or more; the term does not include smaller solar installations for residential or agricultural use.
Supporters say solar helps Virginia meet legislatively mandated clean-energy goals as demand for electricity rises, while also producing revenue for localities and landowners.
Joe Lerch, director of local government policy for the Virginia Association of Counties, said that passing the bills would immediately make battery storage a by-right use on hundreds of utility-scale solar sites across the commonwealth.
Lerch said that local governments are encouraged by the potential of battery storage but want to retain the authority to decide whether such systems would be allowed at solar sites.
“We think that these things can be permitted within our communities, but it should be the ability of the locality, their elected officials, their citizens and other stakeholders to make those decisions, specifically how they fit in,” Lerch said.
Sen. Luther Cifers, R-Prince Edward County, expressed concern that when a local government approved a solar site, it might not have considered the “substantially different” risk of fire that would come with adding battery storage.
McPike said that fire prevention codes have been updated to address battery storage and that newer batteries are safer and less prone to fires than earlier generations of battery storage technology. According to the University of Virginia’s online databases tracking solar and battery storage, localities across the commonwealth have approved more than 16,000 megawatts of solar generation and more than 2,000 megawatts of battery storage. About one quarter of that battery storage is paired or colocated with solar generation.