Raffi Boloyan, Dixon’s director of community development, talks to City Council members during a Nov. 3 meeting.

DIXON, CA (MPG) – The Dixon City Council voted unanimously to extend its moratorium on data centers through Sept. 30, 2027, and it added a 45-day ban on battery energy storage systems during its Nov. 3 meeting.

The moratoriums will give the city time to study potential impacts involving water and energy use, along with the effects of noise and emissions, connected with data centers and battery energy storage systems, said Raffi Boloyan, Dixon’s director of community development.

Dixon has not received an application for either a data center or battery energy storage system project as yet, but city officials want a planning process in place in case that happens.

“As it stands right now … if a data center wanted to come in here, they don’t have to go through a public process, they don’t have to tell us what they’re using in terms of utilities, they’re just allowed to build,” city attorney Douglas White said before the vote. “That’s what our code allows. That’s part of what this change is.”

City Council passed an initial 45-day moratorium on approval of new land use applications for data centers during a special meeting approximately six weeks ago. It didn’t formally address a halt on battery energy storage systems at that time but instead did so on Nov. 3.

Data centers, which can vary in size and purpose, are physical structures that run large numbers of computers securely and continuously. Battery energy storage systems store energy for later use with the idea of boosting grid reliability and supporting renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. 

The effort to impose a moratorium was prompted by recent City Council discussions regarding Dixon’s regulations and ability to manage specific types of development, as well as a noticeable statewide increase in the development of data centers and battery energy storage system facilities. 

These include the Corby Battery Energy Storage System project proposed by NextEra Energy on 40 acres near the intersection of Kilkenny Road and Byrnes Road in Solano County, just west of Dixon, and efforts by Middle River Power of Chicago to build two battery energy storage systems on 10 acres in Vacaville, called the Vaca Dixon Power Center project.

The Dixon Municipal Code currently does not identify data centers or battery storage systems as permitted uses. When a proposed use is not defined, city officials must classify it as a use substantially similar in character to a listed use. 

Absent specific regulations for data centers or battery storage systems, Dixon faces uncertainty in processing, entitling and conditioning proposed project sites. 

An applicant could, for example, seek to classify a data center as similar to a utility or telecommunications facility, whose standards were not designed to address the electricity, water, noise and infrastructure impacts of large-scale data centers.

Research into the effects of both data centers and battery storage systems will likely be done simultaneously, Boloyan added. 

Dixon is preparing a request for proposal to obtain qualified consultant assistance on both data centers and battery energy storage systems. It may also use city employees to conduct such research, Boloyan said.

City Council has until Dec. 18 to enact a longer moratorium on battery energy storage systems, should it choose that path.