BEDFORD, N.Y. - Joining a growing roster of concerned municipalities, Bedford moved last week to halt any immediate effort to stand up a battery farm in the town.
It’s likely to impose a six-month moratorium on issuing permits or approvals for battery energy-storage systems (BESS). Better known as “battery farms,” they store excess power in periods of low electricity demand and release power when electricity demand is high.
The Town Board voted last week to hold a public hearing at its next meeting, Aug. 13, on a local law imposing a six-month moratorium on issuing permits or approvals for the storage facilities. Several towns in Westchester and Putnam counties are considering or have enacted similar freezes.
Bedford Supervisor Ellen Calves said local officials were aware of “some companies” interested in putting large-scale storage facilities on residential property in the town. “The mechanism that they want to use . . . is applying [for a special-use permit] as a public utility,” she told the Town Board’s July 16 meeting.
“We would prefer to consider a local law that more accurately shows the safety measures we would like to see,” Calves said, something like Bedford’s wireless-facilities statute. That law subjects an applicant—even one styling itself a public utility—to the scrutiny of land-use regulatory bodies like the planning and zoning boards.
The Town Board will hold a public hearing on the proposed moratorium at its next meeting, Aug. 13. That six-month pause, the supervisor said, would “give the town time to meet with stakeholders, review zoning issues, legal precedent and safety standards and develop regulations to deal with various types of these applications.”
Even as she presses for safeguards, Calves acknowledged that battery farms “are increasingly necessary as part of our transition to renewable energy.”
“While an oil tank can be stored,” she noted, “[the electricity generated by] solar power and wind power can’t be stored in a barrel. It can be stored in a battery.”
Still, before the town considers applications for battery farms, Calves said, “we can take six months to figure out how they might work safely and effectively within our zoning.”
Fire has become a major concern as municipalities protected by volunteer firefighters contemplate battling a blaze in, say, battery containers on sites the size of a football field. Extinguishing burning lithium-ion batteries requires lots of time and water, experts say, and even after a fire is out the batteries have a history of re-ignition.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, NYSERDA, is “working very hard to address the safety issue,” Mark Thielking, the town’s director of energy and sustainability, said.
Addressing last week’s meeting via a Zoom hookup, he said, “They’re at the cutting edge of identifying best practices.”
Town attorney Eric Gordon told the board NYSERDA has “proposed a model law for these types of facilities.”
Across the country, utility-sized battery farms, each storing millions of watts of electricity, are a rapidly growing fact of life. The two leading states, California and Texas, measure their total storage capacity in gigawatts, or billions of watts of electricity. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said battery storage could increase nationally by 89 percent by year’s end.
Locally, however, proposed large-scale storage facilities have faced opposition. Plans by East Point Energy (Charlottesville, Va.) to establish a 116-megawatt battery farm in Mahopac, near its border with Somers, triggered protests by more than 200 residents from both communities at a June 19 public hearing. The Carmel Town Board voted the temporary ban at its July 10 meeting.
Similar freezes were being contemplated or have been enacted in Mount Kisco, North Castle and Yonkers.
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