Kern County planning panel backs 1,400‑MW Discovery solar and storage project, forwards it to supervisors

The Kern County Planning Commission voted to approve staff recommendations to certify the environmental review for the Discovery Solar PV & Storage project and forward the project to the county Board of Supervisors for final consideration. The commission’s action followed staff and applicant presentations describing a roughly 1,400‑megawatt solar photovoltaic facility with multiple gigawatt‑hours of battery storage proposed on about 7,700 acres in southeast Kern County.

Staff planner Mark Tolentino told commissioners the project would be sited on 473 parcels and would require multiple zone changes, conditional use permits and amendments to the Kern County General Plan circulation element. He summarized the final Environmental Impact Report, the associated mitigation, monitoring and reporting program and said the EIR contains 64 mitigation measures designed to reduce project and cumulative impacts. Tolentino also summarized workforce and fiscal estimates, saying the construction workforce would average several hundred workers per day with peak construction employment in the high hundreds and that operations would require a small permanent staff.

Why it matters: The project would add large‑scale renewable generation and long‑duration storage to Kern County’s energy portfolio, and staff emphasized local economic benefits — including multi‑million‑dollar property tax estimates — as reasons to recommend certification of the EIR and…