Pulaski County, Virginia wants to be a nationwide leader in green energy, County Administrator says

Pulaski County, Virginia, wants to become a nationwide leader in renewable energy. The county that, in January, approved a special use permit for a 300 MW solar farm developed by Hecate Energy, is now awaiting a wind farm in development by Apex Energy that could have a capacity of more than 150 MW.

This is according to Jonathan Sweet, the County Administrator, who gave a presentation Thursday to the Virginia Solar Summit on the county’s energy future.

“We want to enjoy a distinction and competitive advantage effectively from being one of the greenest energy producing communities per capita in the country. I mean, obviously, the region will have that pretty easily. The state, there's no question,” Sweet said. “We think this is the third largest solar farm on the eastern seaboard. So, with that, you add our hydro, you add our methane, you add Apex Wind to the (mix), without a doubt, per capita, we could be one of the leaders in the country.”

Becoming that leader could translate into more investment in a community already home to nine international companies, Sweet said.

“So, these projects effectively translate directly into investment and revenues and jobs for our community,” Sweet said. “We want to, of course, become home to more international and domestic green-and-environmentally-aware companies, particularly in the technology, food production, distribution, and advanced manufacturing sectors.”

Hecate Energy and its state affiliate, AgriSun Power, used the opportunity for economic diversification to sell the project, touting the possibility of tech companies with renewable procurement goals moving to the county.

Currently, the county boasts the 75 MW Claytor Dam hydro project, a 3.6 MW methane conversion plant, and 36 residential solar projects, with the Hecate solar farm and Apex wind project forthcoming.

Sweet wants to ramp those numbers up and focus more on utility scale generation.

“It's important that a community has a stated solar position,” Sweet said. “The communities need to make that statement to effectively fertilize the environment for those types of projects. You can see that we want to leverage our SolSmart designation, to not only streamline solar permitting processes for our residents and commercial industrial installations, but also you can see we want to educate ourselves and prepare the community for utility scale solar opportunities.”

Some of the benefits to Pulaski County are more straightforward than others.

“This is also going to be a new guaranteed revenue stream in the county, which means new investment opportunities,” Sweet said. “We've been trying to figure out how to develop, for example, a new community center and other community assets. Well, this is a way to service that debt, it is a fixed guaranteed income stream that we can use to service that debt long term.”

The county has been laying the groundwork to achieve their future energy goals.

Last year, the county secured a designation as a solar-ready community by the SolSmart program, run by the Solar Initiative and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office. The designation, achieved by more than 300 communities around the country, is a positive sign to interested developers.

“We are a SolSmart community and one of only three gold standards in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Sweet said. “We are really proud about achieving this mark.”