PLYMOUTH — At their meeting last Thursday, the Marshall County Plan Commission discussed the topic of putting together the county’s ordinances for solar energy storage systems.
Marshall County Plan Director Nicholas Witwer and Board President and Commissioner Stan Klotz reported to the board about an informational meeting they had that morning with the Wabash Valley Power Alliance and REMC regarding battery energy storage systems. The meeting was to gather information for the board to put together the county ordinances that will govern such systems.
Witwer reported that the “takeaway” from the meeting was that some sort of battery energy storage systems will inevitably be a necessary part of the power distribution structure in the future. The presentation showed that with current power needs, in order to protect public access to electricity, the burden on the current transmission methods will have to be eased.
Klotz told the board that “we will see blackouts in the future” if the problem isn’t addressed. He said that he felt that “mini-nuclear” systems could also be in the future as a way to address the burden on current electricity transmission on the grid.
Witwer said they were informed that in the next three to five years, data centers alone would require 99 percent of the power currently being generated nationwide.
Klotz told the board the difference in the units they saw at the meeting as opposed to the system recently denied a variance by the Marshall County BZA were that they were smaller, safer for the public, adding that REMC is interested in Marshall County and not just in making money and adding most of the power will stay in the county rather than going onto the grid. He suggested that the systems he saw in the presentation might even warrant considering a separate category for those systems as they consider the new ordinance.
In February, the Marshall County Commissioners placed a moratorium on four types of solar-related projects: farm-scale solar projects, utility-scale battery energy storage systems, data centers, and carbon capture projects in Marshall County.
