Chajes: Sussex County Council should ‘step up’ on substation

One thing that Americans of all walks of life and political stripes seem to agree on is that our demand for electricity will rise dramatically in the coming years, due to the needs of streaming services, data centers, artificial intelligence and other computer-intensive applications.

We should be doing all we can to strengthen and modernize our grid, and ensure that new electric generation from any source can get connected to the electricity transmission system that enables our modern life. This is essential infrastructure we have ignored for too long, resulting in “congestion fees” added to our power bills when our existing wires are not adequate to carry the peak demand for electrons.

Sussex County Council has before it a request from US Wind for a conditional use permit to build an electrical substation in Dagsboro on land the company owns next to an existing Delmarva Power substation. This site is zoned heavy industrial, and there are no residential areas close by.

The Sussex County Planning & Zoning Commission recommended unanimously that council issue the permit because it found no legal reason not to. It is time for County Council to step up to its responsibilities to approve basic infrastructure that will serve electricity users and ratepayers locally and across the Delmarva Peninsula into the future.

Beth Chajes

Newark

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