Linn County planners continue drafting rules for commercial battery energy storage, defer final decisions on mid-size projects

Linn County Planning and Zoning commissioners spent the bulk of their meeting reviewing a draft ordinance to govern commercial battery energy storage systems (BESS), focusing on which sizes of systems the county should regulate, setbacks and operational buffers, emergency-response requirements, decommissioning bonds and soil testing, and permit procedures.

Commissioners and staff said the immediate goal is to finalize rules for tier 2 and tier 3 commercial systems and leave smaller residential systems (tier 1) out of the new county regulations. County staff explained the draft ties into existing zoning and the county’s comprehensive plan and would be implemented through conditional use permits subject to site-plan review and public hearings.

Why it matters: commercial BESS installations can be large — measured in megawatt-hours — and raise concerns about noise, visual impacts, hazardous materials and emergency response. The commission’s rules will determine where operators may locate systems, what safety documentation they must provide, and what financial assurances are required before a system is built.

Most of the discussion addressed definitions and tiers. Commissioners and staff described a three-tier system used in the draft: tier 1 for small, typically residential systems (an aggregate energy capacity up to roughly 80 kilowatts), tier 2 for mid-size commercial systems (roughly 81–600 kilowatts in the draft’s working numbers), and tier 3 for utility-scale systems above about 600 kilowatts. Commissioners noted commercial projects commonly measure in megawatt-hours, and a commercial installation of 50–150…