North Salem Gets Proactive About Battery Energy Storage Systems

NORTH SALEM, N.Y. - Painfully aware of the struggles other communities have had with battery energy storage systems (BESS) -- planned or existing -- North Salem officials are taking a proactive approach to the somewhat new green-adjacent technology.

While no such projects are on the immediate horizon, last week they took action to – as Supervisor Warren Lucas explained it – “get out in front of the issue.”

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In a unanimous vote, the Town Board set a public hearing on proposed changes to local zoning regulations that would, among other things, prohibit BESS except those “dedicated to providing energy solely for the property on which it is located.”

The code does currently allow for small, individual battery storage – with certain limitations.

Clearly defining BESS will go a long way toward clearing up any “confusion,” according to Planning Board Chair Cynthia Curtis.

The hearing is set for 7 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 27, at the North Salem Court/Meeting Room at 66 June Road.

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The town has already nixed commercial solar farms. Individual residents or businesses can use solar devices to produce their own electricity but they can’t sell the excess to the local utility – in North Salem’s case, that’s New York State Electric & Gas (NYSE&G) -- or their neighbors.

Unlike wind and solar farms, BESS do not produce energy; they store it.

There lies the rub, as Hamlet would say.

Are BESS “public utilities” and are they “necessary” for the provision of electricity?

Proponents have argued that they are, especially in light of the state’s goal of reaching 70 percent carbon neutrality by 2030.

Albany has touted the idea of energy storage as a way to make the grid more resilient, especially during times of peak demand thereby heading “brownouts” and “blackouts” off at the pass.

Utilities themselves have been looking for ways to wean themselves off fossil-fueled “peaker” power plants, which are notorious for being expensive, polluting, and inefficient.

Impacts

From a land use perspective BESS are, experts say, low in the impact department.

Once it’s built and operational, the facilities require no regular staffing, just routine maintenance.

However, their cooling fans are noisy. This can usually be mitigated with sound barriers and landscaping.

Safety is the bigger issue.

BESS foes have pointed to the presence of highly flammable substances and the chances of air and groundwater contamination.

Those safety concerns, historically, has been resolved by keeping them out of residential areas and limiting them to industrial districts.

In more urbanized areas, such as Nassau County on Long Island, where varied uses and districts are closely packed in together, that’s not always possible, experts say.

The polar opposite of over-developed, North Salem is highly protective of its bucolic nature.

Details, Details

As currently defined, a public utility is “any person, firm, corporation or governmental agency duly authorized to furnish to the public, under governmental regulation, electricity, gas, water, sewage disposal and treatment, steam, cable or communication service.”

(The definition doesn’t bestow “any special status or standing not already provided by state or federal law.”)

The first text change to be made says that “this definition does not include batter energy storage systems (BESS), BESS stations, or similar BESS facilities.”

If amended, the code would define BESS as “one or more devices capable of storing energy in order to supply electrical energy at a future time, not to include a stand-alone 12-volt car battery or an electric motor vehicle.”

A battery, or batteries, are defined in the proposed document as “a single cell or group of cells connected electrically in series, in parallel, or a combination of both, which can change, discharge, and store energy electrochemically, excluding batteries utilized in consumer products.”

And, most importantly, it would be amended to list among prohibited uses, “Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), except those systems dedicated to providing energy solely for the property on which it is located.

Regional Rumblings

Recently, the Putnam County town of Carmel reacted to massive public opposition to a proposed 116-watt BESS in Mahopac by enacting a six-month moratorium on such facilities.

The biggest objections centered around health, safety, and environmental issues.

Carmel’s current code permits BESS. While the town started to update its master plan and zoning to outlaw BESS that size, it wasn’t in place when East Point Energy sought approval for the lithium battery farm.

The freeze is intended to serve as a stopgap until the revised code is adopted. That’s expected to take place within the next few months.

Folks in the neighboring town of Somers joined the fray after learning that the facility was to be located within 150 feet of a residential neighborhood there.

Sidewalk demonstrations, T-shirts, lawn signs, and impassioned pleas to town officials commenced.

At its July 11 meeting, the Somers Town Board voted to accept a zoning text amendment to create the definition of a public utility. The next step is to circulate that to the town’s and the county’s planning boards.

As of this writing, no date for a public hearing had been set.

The wording of the proposed amendment was exactly the same as North Salem’s. Most importantly, it states that public utilities are not battery energy storage systems “or similar facilities.”

Although public opposition has not yet visibly risen to Somers’ level in Mount Kisco, the village/town is grappling with a similar situation.

The applicants for a BESS on North Bedford Road, New Leaf Energy, appealed after the local building inspector found that its project didn’t fit the standard for public utilities under Mount Kisco’s current code.

The Zoning Board of Appeals eventually agreed with that determination.

New Leaf’s attorney, Robert Gaudioso, has said an interconnection agreement has already been solidified between his clients and the utility of record in Mount Kisco, Con Edison.

New Leaf could still seek a use variance. Site plan approval would have to be granted by the Mount Kisco Planning Board.

The Mount Kisco Village Board set a public hearing for Monday, Aug. 5, on a proposed six-month moratorium.

It would buy it time to create local laws specifically defining – and regulating – BESS.

That’s basically the reasoning behind North Salem’s recent move to better define what public utilities and BESS are.

Under the proposed text change, battery farms would not be considered public utilities.

North Salem’s legal counsel, Roland Baroni, assured the board that “that’s what it’s all about.”

“It has nothing to do with Carmel; it has to do with what’s going on in Mount Kisco,” he said, explaining that the BESS applicant there had argued that “under their definition of public utility, it qualifies and therefore doesn’t need any kind of a special permit and can go in an industrial zone.”

Looking Forward

“Our intent is to go back after that and figure out more details, but at least this kind of puts the brake on things,” Lucas said at the Town Board’s July 23 meeting.

Councilwoman Katherine Daniels told fellow board members that she and other members of the town’s Climate Smart Community Leadership Committee (CSCLT) had discussed the proposed code changes and agreed that it was the “right approach.”

Baroni reminded Lucas that the amendments have to be officially referred to the county’s planning board for comment.

But before that happens, a short-form Environmental Assessment Form (EAF) needs to be put together, he added.

Not having a local law in place to govern commercial-sized BESS has been “a problem” in other communities, Daniels told North Salem News later.

Although the CSCLT recognizes the need for greater energy resiliency and would like North Salem to be “self-sustaining,” this small step forward is a good start toward attaining that “long-term goal,” she said.

Speaking of the ban on commercial solar farms, Daniels reiterated that folks are allowed to generate power for their own use. A certain amount of excess can be transferred to the grid, but it can’t be sold to the utility or others.

“There’s no incentives now, but that could change in the future,” she said, noting that residents seem “less concerned” about roof-top operations than “the classic solar farms that you see upstate.

“They want to be able to generate their own power, but not in our big, beautiful open fields,” Daniels said, adding that the bid to better define BESS illustrates the “little bit of tension between wanting to be self-sustaining and wanting to control things so we don’t open ourselves up to large solar and battery farms.”

“We’re trying to avoid having to go through all that,” she said.

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