Business Cycle: Solar project proposed on Bent Mountain - Roanoke Times

Business Cycle: Solar project proposed on Bent Mountain

A Massachusetts renewable energy company has proposed placing solar panels on Bent Mountain.

New Leaf Energy Inc. proposed construction of an energy facility at 9150 Reed Road that would begin generating electricity in 2027. The site is a former apple orchard — now mostly cleared for pasture — that belongs to Glenn Reed.

The facility, which is described as small, will generate 3 megawatts or 4 megawatts of energy, the proposal said.

Reed said Wednesday it’s the lease payments for use of his land that he’s interested in. “Clean energy, too,” Reed said.

New Leaf acting on Reed’s authorization applied for a special-use permit March 8. Roanoke County scheduled its planning commission to consider the project June 4. The commission typically makes a recommendation for or against a proposal and sends it on to the county board of supervisors. That board has the final say and will consider it June 25.

People are also reading…

County officials posted to their planning website a 422-page information package, which depicts conceptual plans for the site about 1,500 feet west of Bent Mountain Road. The panels could be visible from nearby homes and the road, but “enhanced” landscaping to “mitigate the visual impact to the viewshed” is planned, the proposal said.

The project will be made up of 12,400 panels, according to the proposal.

A New Leaf representative, who is based in Lowell, Massachusetts, wrote that “the project will keep this property rural and income producing while not constructing permanent buildings, public utilities and public roads.”

New Leaf said the possible presence of threatened or endangered species may require action specified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline has been installed in the same general area of Bent Mountain over the objection of some landowners.

Blacksburg packaging equipment company to expand

ESS Technologies of Blacksburg plans to expand as it moves to Christiansburg, the company said Wednesday.

ESS started in Blacksburg 31 years ago and provides product packaging-line design and machinery. It plans to spend $1.6 million and hire 27 people in connection with the move. It could not be immediately learned how many people already work at ESS.

Operations in Pembroke and Blacksburg will be consolidated at a leased site on Scattergood Drive, according to CEO Michael Odom of Pacteon Group, which owns ESS.

ESS employs 55 people.

Plant fuel in Volvo’s tank

Volvo Trucks North America in Dublin said it has begun shipping freight trucks that can burn hydrotreated vegetable oil, or HVO, with 20 to 25 gallons of the plant-based fuel in the new trucks’ tanks.

The company said it expects to buy more than 1 million gallons of HVO from its supplier. The U.S. Department of Energy describes it as a renewable diesel that emits lower amounts of harmful compounds into the environment when burned in an internal combustion engine than petroleum-based diesel.

The availability of internal combustion engines that run on renewable diesel — not a new technology — coupled with the development of electric trucks now available and, someday, those with hydrogen fuel cells, will provide multiple ways for “decarbonizing transportation,” according to an April 24 statement by Volvo President Peter Voorhoeve.

The Dublin center employs 3,600 people who build all Volvo trucks for North America. Crews are completing a $400 million factory for the production of truck cabs. The cabs will go in what the company calls a highly redesigned version of its long-haul truck the VNL. It is scheduled to come out later this year.

Puppy store to open at mall

Valley View Mall is the future home of a dog store called Waggles Puppy Boutique.

The owner is spending $200,000 to build a storefront with 14 kennels on the second floor, city records showed.

The pups will cost an average of $2,000, according to Kerry Rod, chief operating officer of the Waggles organization, who anticipates a late June opening. This will be the company‘s second store, Rod said.

The first store is open in Port Charlotte, Florida, while about 20 locations are “in development,” Rod said.

“Waggles Puppy Boutique is creating a new model for how people can obtain their cherished new family members,” Rod wrote. “Our focus is on providing healthy, well socialized puppies, and working with new families to find the perfect fit to create forever homes. Our commitment stems from a group of people who have spent years placing puppies while expanding breeding standards in the field and developing in-store operations that focuses on the health and welfare of the puppies in their care.”

Waggles plans to occupy is the same location in Valley View where a pet store called Puppy Love Inc. operated from 2008 to August 2022, when it closed with little advance notice. State records describe the Puppy Love company as inactive. Rod said there is no connection between Waggles and Puppy Love.

Annual meeting date uncertain at Luna

We’re two or three weeks away from the typical date of the annual meeting of Roanoke’s Luna Innovations with no meeting on the calendar.

A spokeswoman for the provider of advanced fiber-optic technology said “the date of the annual meeting will be made public once confirmed.”

Luna recently announced that financial reports it filed in 2022 and 2023 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had accounting errors and will need to be resubmitted. This has held up the filing of its annual financial report for 2023. The 10-K, as the annual report is called, was released in March in nine of the last 10 years.

As of May 1, there had been no new developments in a shareholder lawsuit against Luna over the financial statements, other than a routine case-management order filed by the judge in mid-April.

Jeff Sturgeon (540) 981-3251

jeff.sturgeon@roanoke.com