By: Charles Romans
Carter County Times
The Carter County Fiscal Court heard public comments at their regularly scheduled meeting on June 8, including concerns about the proposed data center in EastPark. Ellen Spieless addressed the court, bringing to their attention her concerns which included, among other things, sound and light pollution potentially generated by the data center planned for the industrial park.
“The concern I have for you,” she told the court, “is four bats that frequent Carter Caves. They are currently on the endangered species list. And we have two more that are threatened or are proposed to go on the endangered species list.”
The species of bat winter at Carter Caves, Spieless told the court. She also said the information she came across indicated that if you develop land in northeast Kentucky, a formal environmental survey must be done, especially around heavily forested areas and areas with natural caves to ensure that endangered species such as the bats she referenced were not adversely affected.
In other business, Solar Development Manager Mark Brough from EDP Renewables addressed the court concerning a proposed small scale solar facility between Mount Savage and Denton in Carter County.
“This is on Mick Franks’ property off 773,” Brough told the court. “It’s on one of his parcels that is currently being farmed for hay.”
“The projects that we do are called community solar projects,” Brough explained. “Everyone has heard of the mega projects, but ours are considered small because they are under five megawatts. That’s roughly 20 to 24 acres.”
“We will be interconnecting it, which means plugging it in at the distribution line,“ Brough said. “There is no infrastructure build on it. We are literally just plugging it into a pole. So, it ends up being very basic and doesn’t take very long. Construction time is probably three months from the time we break ground until we turn it on.”
Brough provided the court with a rudimentary map of the site, and said that the next step would be to send out environmental experts to look for wetlands and other considerations, and also look at any drain tiles on the property.
“The primary way we build these is we just drive posts into the ground like you would a fence,” Brough told the court of the process. “There is no concrete or permanent structures involved. And when the project is done, we pull them out of the ground and return it to farmland.”
Brough said a solar farm typically lasts between 20 and 25 years before the panels stop producing at a rate which is financially beneficial, at which point they are decommissioned.
Brough explained that the community solar plugs into the distribution line of existing power supplies, in this particular case, Kentucky Power. There is no direct “path” of the power generated by the solar farm, meaning it is simply added to the overall power grid. But projects of this nature are able to generate enough energy to power between 400 and 600 homes a year, he told the court.
The project is being financed by Walmart, Brough said, though the power generated isn’t “sent” to the retailer.
“Walmart is doing what is called a ‘Virtual Power Purchase Agreement,’” Brough told the court. “They are breaking even on it, but what they get to say is twenty percent of their electricity nationwide comes from renewable energy. And they have partnered with us to do 20 to 30 projects like this across Kentucky and Ohio.”
The last order of business at the meeting was a motion made by magistrate Derrick McKinney, seconded by magistrate Millard Cordle, to draft an ordinance banning the creation or establishment of data centers within Carter County and have KACo (Kentucky Association of Counties) review for legal standing. The motion passed by unanimous vote of all magistrates present. The draft ordinance would then need to be approved by fiscal court in a future meeting.
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
