Published 11:46 am Saturday, July 11, 2026
By Jeff Moore
The Buckingham County Board of Supervisors approved changes to its zoning ordinance and comprehensive plan to comply with state laws governing utility-scale solar projects and battery energy storage systems that took effect July 1. 
At a June 22 special meeting, supervisors took up the proposed changes that were tabled earlier in the month following a public hearing. 
In a memo explaining the need for the changes, Zoning Administrator Nicci Edmondston explained that the recommendations calibrate the county regulations as protective as the new Virginia law will allow. 
“This is not a discretionary policy initiative,” Edmondston stated in the memo. “Two enactments of the 2026 General Assembly rewrite the rules that govern how every Virginia locality may regulate utility-scale solar and battery energy storage, and both take effect July 1, 2026.” 
Her memo states that new laws tied to House Bill 711 and its companion Senate Bill 347 put in place a uniform statewide framework on ground-mounted solar, which includes a mandatory special-exception pathway, 12 ordinance criteria and specific ranges and caps on setback, screening, height and revegetation.
It goes on to explain the second set of new laws, tied to HB 891 and SB 443, allow battery energy storage as a permitted accessory use in every zoning district that already holds an approved special exception for a solar facility.
Edmondston said that under the Dillon Rule, counties only have the powers granted by the General Assembly, which means parts of the zoning law and comprehensive plan that conflict with the new laws are void.
Had supervisors not approved the changes, Edmondston wrote, it would have fallen to the zoning administrator to determine which ordinance provisions remained valid and which became void. She said that would expose the county to legal risk by relying on day-to-day administrative judgment.
“Existing county setback, screening, height and decommissioning-bond figures that exceed the statutory caps become unenforceable, and there is no adopted ordinance setting the county’s figures at the maximum the statute allows,” Edmondston said in the memo.
She further explained that any application filed after the new laws take effect would be governed by the bare state framework, applied case-by-case, rather than by a single, defensible county ordinance.
“In short, declining to adopt does not make the county more protective,” Edmondston stated in the document. “It makes the county less protective, because the protections the proposed ordinance locks in would never take effect, and the county would administer the new state floor without the county’s own maximum-restriction choices on top of it. The proposed ordinance is the instrument — the only instrument — by which the county captures every protection the 2026 acts still permit it to impose.”
County Attorney E.M. Wright Jr. also recommended approval of the changes to the zoning ordinance and the comprehensive plan.
In a report prepared for supervisors, Wright outlined four consequences of not approving the updates, including leaving it to Edmondston to determine which ordinance provisions remain valid, making future denials of special use permits more vulnerable to legal challenges, potentially rendering decommissioning bonds that exceed state limits unenforceable, and complicating the county’s position in pending or future State Corporation Commission proceedings involving transmission lines or other facilities tied to solar battery storage.
“None of these consequences is catastrophic, but all of them transfer legal risk from a properly adopted ordinance onto the zoning administrator’s day-to-day judgment and create a meaningful window during which adverse applicants have improved leverage supervisors voted unanimously to approve the most restrictive options allowed under the new laws for both solar projects and battery storage,” the county attorney stated in his report.
Supervisors approved the updates to both the zoning ordinance and the comprehensive plan, imposing the most restrictive options the county is now allowed under the new state laws.
ZONING CHANGES
Edmondston’s memo explaining the updated ordinances stated that the state law sets a range that allows the county to determine what is appropriate for the community.
“Staff has set every such value at the most protective end of the permitted range, and has made the three adjustments needed to reach that posture across the board,” she stated in the document.
These include:
Raising the setback from an abutting road to 100 feet, up from the previous 75-feet. Under the new state law, 100 feet is the maximum setback allowed.
Sets the vegetative screening buffer at 50 feet, the maximum allowed under state law.
Makes a viewshed analysis mandatory for every project rather than discretionary, exercising the fullest authority allowed.
Edmondston noted that the current 200-foot setbacks from dwellings and 75-feet from shared property lines, the three foot screening height cap at planting and the permanent 75% vegetative cover requirement were already set at the statutory maximum. 
For battery energy storage systems, the zoning law updates add needed definitions, set the maximums allowed for dimensional, screening and setback standards and other changes to bring the county ordinance in line with the new state law.
COMPREHENSIVE PLAN UPDATE
Edmondston explained the update to the comprehensive plan is needed to make the changes in the zoning ordinance enforceable.
“The companion comprehensive plan amendments are not optional housekeeping; they are what gives the county’s siting preferences real legal weight and what the new statute assumes will exist,” she explained in the document.
Edmondston said the ordinance and comprehensive plan are intended to operate together, adding that adopting one without the other would leave a gap exposed by the new law.

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