Sonoma County Board of Supervisors,
The purpose of this letter is to discuss the state of play of BESS moratoriums and siting standards in California specifically in San Diego County and Solano County. These two counties have taken major new steps and instituted bold initiatives regarding both BESS siting standards and moratoriums over the past few months.
The California Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Commission have strongly supported the installation of utility scale BESS facilities as part of their energy strategy. They have done so without first having developed and enacted site selection criteria and standards to guide developers, county and city permitting agencies and community stakeholders. This has resulted in significant opposition to many inappropriately sited facilities in Vacaville, Morro Bay, Bel Marin Keys, Acton, Escondido, San Diego and Petaluma. By ‘inappropriately sited’ we mean the proposed sites are in proximity to residential areas, schools and hospitals, sensitive ecological areas, cultural resources and key transportation infrastructure.
San Diego County
San Diego County has several BESS facilities in operation and has had three serious fires in the past few years. The most recent of these is the Otay Mesa fire in May of this year that required over 40 firefighters and took more than two weeks to extinguish. The fire has been attributed to “thermal runaway,” a phenomenon that leads to a chain reaction when lithium-ion batteries generate heat faster than it can be dissipated. As firefighters worked to keep the conflagration under control, officials were at a loss to predict when the batteries would stop reigniting. This fire was associated with evacuations, road closures and sheltering in place.
On June 27, 2024 the San Diego County Board of Supervisors discussed an agenda item at its regular meeting that dealt specifically with BESS siting standards. Here are a few excerpts from the minutes of that meeting:
“Beyond the uniqueness of BESS facilities, these projects also often generate public controversy and opposition, particularly when located near existing residential neighborhoods. By and large, this is based on an understanding of the associated public health and safety risks, such as fire, thermal runaway, and release of toxic gases. For example, the 250-megawatt Gateway Energy Storage facility located in East Otay Mesa (District 1), approved by the County in 2018 caught fire in May of this year and continued to reignite despite efforts to contain it. This incident prompted an evacuation warning for nearby businesses, deployment of firefighters and HAZMAT teams to put out the blaze, monitor air quality conditions and discharge of waterborne contaminants in firefighting suppression activities, and establishment of a 600-foot buffer from the site due to potential for release of toxic gases. In Valley Center (District 5) a much smaller, but nonetheless concerning fire occurred recently at the County-approved Terra-Gen BESS facility. This resulted in temporary road closures and evacuation orders for nearby homes. Clearly, public fixation on the health, safety and environmental risks posed by these facilities is well warranted.”
“Given the unique operating characteristics of BESS facilities, their inherent safety concerns, and a growing public awareness of their impacts - particularly when located near or within residential neighborhoods - the County must adopt specific development standards for guiding our review process of new BESS project applications. In this spirit, today’s action directs the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) to establish development standards for siting BESS projects in the unincorporated areas and orders a temporary pause on any new application submittals until standards have been developed and adopted.”
Please watch this recent news video from Fox 5 San Diego. It clearly shows the concern that that the San Diego Board of Supervisors has about the recent BESS accidents in their county. Note Supervisor Jim Desmond’s comments in this news video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l56c5TVgha0&ab_channel=FOX5SanDiego
Also note that the County has approved a budget of $1.25 million for BESS siting standards development.
Solano County
There are no utility scale BESS facilities in Solano County. There have been a number of BESS facilities proposed in both the county by NextEra and also in the City of Vacaville by Menard Energy. There have been many well attended public meetings and hearings and there are numerous articles in the news describing these meetings and hearings. The Vacaville City Council recently voted 6 to 0 against the proposed Menard BESS facility proposed to be built on city owned land. More importantly the Solano County Board of Supervisors recently voted unanimously 7 to 0 to extend and existing 45 day BESS moratorium to 2 years until 2026 to allow “planning staff time to develop land use standards that ensure public safety, health and welfare”.
Here is a link to the Solano County Ordinance that imposes a 2 year moratorium on new BESS facilities:
https://solanocounty.com/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=42754
Here are a few key excerpts from this Ordinance:
“C. There have been several recent fires at BESS facilities both in California and nationwide. BESS facilities that use lithium-ion batteries create particularly unique fire and explosion hazards. Lithium-ion batteries are inherently safe and stable but certain conditions elevate the risk of fire and thermal runaways such as impacts, puncture or mechanical damage, overcharging, overheating, and short circuits.”
“H. The potential for development of new commercial BESS facilities within Solano County without adequate land use policies and standards in place to implement SB 38 and to prevent potentially catastrophic interference with nearby communities presents a current and immediate threat to the public’s safety and welfare, and the approval of additional use permits, or other applicable entitlements for such uses would result in a threat to public safety and welfare.”
In terms of preferred locations to site BESS facilities, they should be co-located and integrated with renewable energy facilities such as solar arrays and/or wind turbines in remote locations. This would then make a BESS facility a truly renewable resource. 48% of California’s land is owned by the Federal government. In view of the fact that proposed BESS facilities are a response to federal green energy legislation, it makes sense that the Federal government would play and important role in the California’s renewable energy future. In fact, here are two excellent examples where integrated BESS and solar facilities have been sited and are now operational on federal land in California:
https://www.blm.gov/press-release/blm-advances-battery-storage-renewable-energy-california-desert
Summary
California communities and neighborhoods like ours are deeply concerned about the siting of these powerful energy facilities where people, structures, habitat and cultural resources are vulnerable. We thought you should know the facts about the BESS siting standards and moratoriums in other California counties and cities. California is not the only state that has imposed moratoriums on BESS facilities. New York and many other states have been imposing moratoriums over the past few years because of inappropriate consideration and development of siting standards and criteria by state regulatory agencies. In many cases, BESS developers have also shown total disregard for public health and safety by virtue of their siting decisions.
This would be an excellent time for the Sonoma Board of Supervisors to consider implementing similar public health and safety initiatives for the two BESS projects proposed near Petaluma. We are asking the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors not only to follow San Diego and Solano County’s lead, but also possibly collaborate with these counties to develop badly needed siting standards and criteria.
We sincerely hope that our Sonoma County Board of Supervisors will make this a priority agenda item at the next regular meeting.
Respectfully,
Joe Petrillo
David Donnenfield
Citizens for Battery Transparency