County passes moratorium on data centers, energy storage systems

     Earlier this month, Land Use Administrator Whitney Amos met with the Jones County Supervisors regrading creating an ordinance pertaining to the construction of data centers within the county.

   During the most recent board meeting on Oct. 15, the board approved two separate moratoriums pertaining to data mining facilities and utility scale battery energy storage systems for up to six months from now. The moratoriums will be in place until the county can finalize an ordinance.

   Amos has been in talks with both Jackson and Franklin counties who are also dealing/have dealt with similar situations. Supervisor Jeff Swisher also spoke with a Franklin County Supervisor, and personally traveled to see a data center for himself.

   A data center, Amos offered, is a storage facility with computers and fans running.

   “It could be cloud storage, bit coin, data centers, etc.,” she said.

   A utility scale battery energy storage system is built for back-up energy.

   “It’s a large-scale electro-chemical device that can store and discharge electricity from the grid or a power plant,” read Amos of the moratorium. “Different battery technologies such as lithium ion, sodium sulfur, and lead acid can be used for this purpose. They’re popping up around. These facilities look very similar to a data mining facility. They use a lot of water to keep it cooled.”

   The company proposing to build a data center outside of Onslow, U-R Energy, will speak with the Jones County Supervisors during their Oct. 22 board meeting.

   Amos said data centers tend to be quite loud, a little over 60 decibels, when located inside s storage container.

   “It’s a little louder than a hog confinement,” she said.

   “I went out and looked at one of these facilities,” offered Swisher. “They are loud. What the Franklin County Supervisor said is you can’t stop it, but you can regulate it. You put a moratorium in effect to figure out your ordinance. Otherwise, you have to do a special-use permit. That’s what Jackson County did. They also have a moratorium on the battery storage as well.”

   Amos noted that U-R Energy did meet with the Jackson County Supervisors a few weeks ago. That county still had more questions following the presentation.

   “They still had some discussion prior to lifting the moratorium,” she said.

   The Jones County Planning & Zoning Commission has been discussing this as well, raising lots of questions.

   “They have a lot of questions that need to be answered and a lot of research that needs to be done,” added Amos.

   She said P&Z did like the Franklin County ordinance that requires a special-use permit no matter what, which automatically means they (the company) would have to go through a public hearing with the Board of Adjustment.

   “That was appealing to them,” Amos said.

   Further, Franklin allows data centers to be built within both the Ag and Industrial districts.

   Swisher added that Johnson County is also looking at an ordinance stemming from the State of Georgia.

   “That policy says they all have to be inside a building. They can’t storage containers,” he shared.

   Unfortunately, in Franklin County, he said their ordinance didn’t specify the type of dwelling, and they’re seeing storage containers being stacked on top of each other to house a data center.