FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | June 2, 2025
Contact: Sarah Fulton (302) 401-1114
DOVER — After hours of discussion and testimony during Monday’s Senate Environment, Energy & Transportation Committee meeting, Senate Bill 159 was released from committee.
Sponsored by Sen. Stephanie Hansen, this legislation takes back the State’s authority to effectuate energy policy and address the looming energy reliability problem facing all Delawareans by providing retroactive approval of the conditional use permit for the US Wind electrical substation previously denied by Sussex County Council.
“Increased energy supply and energy reliability are issues of statewide and state-level concern. Most of the energy we consume is purchased from out-of-state suppliers. Our regional grid operator, PJM, has been warning us about a supply and demand imbalance in the grid that has not only driven up the price of electricity but is now threatening our ability to meet electricity demands here in Delaware as early as this summer. The decision by Sussex County Council to deny the application that would have brought an additional 1700 MW of power into the grid has placed all Delawareans at future risk of higher prices and inadequate supply,” said Sen. Hansen.
“Opponents have couched this as usurping local control, but it is not. This is an urgent situation — affecting one application — in which state government is stepping in to protect all Delawareans’ access to a basic necessity of modern life: electricity.”
US Wind has secured all of the federal and state clearances it needs, but cannot move forward until it can install four export cables to bring the energy onshore at 3R’s Beach and connect to the grid at the DP&L substation in Dagsboro. This area is already zoned as “heavy industrial.”
Hansen continued: “Despite our state’s dire and imminent need to bring more energy onto the grid, the Sussex County Council denied the conditional use permit that US Wind requested — even after its own Planning & Zoning Commission voted unanimously to recommend approval.”
A full Senate vote for SB 159 is planned for next week.
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