Renewable Energy and Kent County
The November 25, 2010 issue of the Kent County News contained an article entitled “Discussion planned on renewable energy task force report”. Apparently a task force for renewable energy was formed about eight months ago and has been creating a comprehensive plan for Kent County. Their report is complete and will be presented to the planning commission on December 2. The report states that “the task force supported the use of small scale (residential-commercial) systems…with significant restrictions in appropriate commercial or industrial zoning districts”.
The task force, chaired by Washington College’s own Briggs Cunningham, examined what they considered the four major sources of renewable energy for this area: wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass.
Here are the results of the task force:
Biomass
- “The recommendations for biomass systems, in all zoning districts, are few.”
-“They should address any impact on surrounding properties, and there should be a waste management plan”
Geothermal
- “Recommendations, again, were brief, mainly that geothermal systems are for houses and buildings.”
- “Homeowners and the school district already have some geothermal systems around the county.”
Solar
- “for utility scale power generation, only solar makes sense in Kent County”
- “Solar farms as a permitted use can be on land zoned Industrial, up to a limit of 50 percent of available acreage.”
- “if solar utility systems are so popular they’ve used up 25 percent of the county’s Employment Center or Industrial zoned land, they would revisit the 25 percent limit.
- “A utility-scale solar power installation in Ag and Resource Conservation requires a special exception for no more than five acres of panels.
- “Small solar systems to help power a house or building are permitted accessory uses in the Industrial zone, with some restrictions, and in Ag, Resource Conservation, Residential Character, Rural Residential, Critical Area Residential, Community Residential, Village and Marine.”
Wind
- “Based on Government studies, the amount of wind here is “poor” to “marginal” for commercial operations.”
- “The recommendations exclude large, utility-scale generators on towers hundreds of feet tall.”
- “Small wind power, if the property is suitable, is a permitted accessory use in Commercial, Industrial, various residential …”
These restrictions seem to be the norm in my opinion for a rural location like Kent County. For a place that beat Wal-Mart, and after reading the title of the article, I was expecting these new regulations to be the extreme. Also the folks from Seven Seas mentioned that Kent County was about to ban high rising wind turbines, and I figured things like solar, and other forms of renewable energy would be banned too. The exclusion of large scale wind turbines was by far the worst thing on this list, but since the resource is not available here, there is really no loss. I was pleasantly surprised with the solar panel restrictions because they seem pretty relaxed. Two things that seemed very progressive to me were the fact that the group is allowing residential solar (slight restrictions based by neighborhood) and that they would revisit certain situations if solar power was becoming a large business in the area.
Thanks for pointing this out. The recommendations seem sensible, however I think they are perhaps not appreciating the potential for biomass. I’m a bit less enthusiastic about solar myself, but with tax incentives, it may make some sense. Really the town should have asked our class for recommendations.
| Posted 1 year, 2 months ago