The Gloucester County Planning Commission will meet virtually at 7 o’clock tonight to discuss Virginia’s Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (DMME) SolSmart program.

Though the main goal of the program is to designate communities as solar friendly, Gloucester does not have to be designated as a SolSmart community to receive technical assistance from the program. The county can still receive content and/or training that could help it with recent legislation, such as the solar tax, and how to best leverage it for the benefit of Gloucester residents.

According to planning and zoning documents, “staff thinks it may also be beneficial to use the assistance of SolSmart to update the comp plan and get a better sense of where we want solar in the county (versus by CUP in all districts) so staff, applicants, and the community have better direction when we get new applications.”

This is the staff’s response to an increasing concern of both Gloucester residents and the planning com...