NEW SCOTLAND — Similar to its adoption five years ago of a law governing major solar facilities in town, New Scotland is once again looking to put in place regulations for another large-scale technology often used to store the excess power generated by intermittent renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. 

Much as in 2017, the town is getting its regulatory ducks in a row because it’s “been approached by a couple of possible projects,” Supervisor Douglas LaGrange said during the town board’s November meeting, and with proposed Local Law E of 2023, it is looking to provide a framework “for the designation of properties suitable for the location, construction, and operation of battery energy storage systems.”

Battery energy storage systems, which often goes by the acronym BESS, are a shipping-container-sized way to stockpile the renewable energy that, in the case of solar, is produced in abundance during the day and disappears after the sun goes down, or, in the case of wind, is dependent on a gusts of air to turn a turbine. 

“I don’t know if anyone has seen in the news, but there’s been a lot of these battery storage places popping up near solar facilities,” Councilman Dan Leinung said to his fellow board members during their November meeting. 

The growth of the storage systems in New York can be traced back to former Governor Andrew Cuomo signing the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which set the ambitious, perhaps almost-impossible-to-achieve, target of all of New York’s power coming from clean energy sources by 2040 in addition to all sectors of the state’s economy removing more greenhouse gas from the atmosphere than they release into it, a concept known as net-zero emissions. 

But the growth in battery storage across New York has come with unintended consequences.

  Governor Kathy Hochul in late July, in response to a series of fires at BESS locations across the state this summer, set up a task force of employees from five different state departments and divisions to suss out the root cause of the fires, which many experts already attribute to a phenomena known as thermal runaway.

Most battery energy storage systems are made up of numerous lithium-ion battery cells, and are often found to be the cause of BESS fires. A defective or damaged battery will emit a hot, flammable toxic gas that pushes more heat into the system, which eventually leads to a fire or explosion.

What makes the fires so dangerous is that they can burn for days because a BESS is, according to Leinung, “basically [a] large shipping-container-size battery … that can be stacked upon each other.”

Recently, lawmakers in Schenectady County, citing concerns that local volunteer fire departments are not equipped to deal with BESS fires, have started to push for a 12-month moratorium on installation of the systems.

Definitions

New Scotland’s proposed law defines a battery energy storage system as “one or more devices, assembled together, capable of storing energy in order to supply electrical energy at a future time,” but is not a “stand-alone 12-volt car battery, an electric motor vehicle, or a rechargeable battery for household appliances, or lawn equipment.”

The proposed bill classifies a BESS as either a Tier 1 or Tier 2 system.

A Tier 1 BESS has an energy capacity equal to or less than 600 kilowatt-hours, according to the town, while only consisting of a single battery, if it’s located in a room or enclosed area. A Tier 2 system has a “capacity greater than 600kWh or [is] comprised of more than one storage battery technology in a room or enclosed area.”

A kilowatt-hour is a unit of measurement that signifies the amount of energy required to keep a device consuming one kilowatt, or 1,000 watts, running for one hour. 

The kilowatt-hour differs from the kilowatt in that a kilowatt is a measurement of consumption; it indicates the amount of power a device needs just to kick on while the kilowatt-hour measures the total energy used over a period of time.

An example: A lightbulb with a 100-watt rating would take 10 actual hours to consume one kilowatt-hour, while it would take a 2,000-watt device, like a portable electric heater, 30 real minutes to consume a kilowatt-hour. For added context, the average U.S. household consumes about 30  kilowatt-hours each day. 

Planners’ concerns

But following input from the New Scotland Planning Board at its Dec. 5 meeting, the town board at its own meeting a week later declined to set a public hearing on the proposed law. 

During that December meeting, planning board Chairman Jeffrey Baker wondered why only one of the proposed two classifications for battery systems would receive close scrutiny from the planning board. 

“I guess my first question is: Why should we exempt all the Tier 1 batteries from a site plan? Especially where you’ve got the public limitations of not to exceed 10 percent of the lot coverage,” Baker said. 

 Proposed Local Law E states, “Building-mounted and Ground-mounted Tier 1 battery energy storage systems shall be permitted in all zoning districts, subject to the Uniform Code and the Battery Energy Storage System Permit and are exempt from site plan review,” except when the Tier 1 system is being proposed as part of a project that is typically subject to added review, such as all commercial, industrial, and educational development. 

Baker said, “I mean, I know these are pretty small units … But when you’re limiting it to a 10-percent lot coverage, it actually could be large. And it doesn’t seem to me terribly burdensome to require somebody to come in for a site plan approval.”

The proposed law permits Tier 1 systems when “the total surface area of the ground-mounted Tier 1 battery energy storage system on the lot shall not exceed 10% lot coverage.”

Baker said, “We do site plan approvals I know for a bunch of ground-mounted solar,” and “we waive public hearings on those most of the time.”