Dangers of BESS Facilities

Safety

Lithium-ion batteries are prone to overheating, swelling, electrolyte leakage venting, fires, smoke, and explosions in worst-case scenarios involving thermal runaway. Thermal runaway leads to explosions and fires within seconds.
Fires can’t be easily extinguished and best practice is to let them burn out, which can take days while residents within a 1/4 to 1 mile are evacuated and shelter in place orders can be issued for up to a two-mile radius.
A pressure wave from a blast can damage nearby homes and blow out windows and has been known to send shrapnel over a ½ mile away..
Toxic chemicals and harmful gases (such as fluoride gas) are released during a thermal event. Residual ash from fire may still contain toxic materials. Strong winds can blow this toxic ash far and wide and cause soil and water contamination.
Commissioned BESS facilities are in their infancy and no long-term studies on public health or environmental impact studies have been done.
First responders are particularly at risk because special equipment and training is needed to respond to BESS fires and failures.
There are no national and comprehensive safety standards for BESS facilities.

Quality of Life

Turning residential neighborhoods and rural communities into industrial zones – BESS facilities consist of massive tractor trailer sized containers that are suited to industrial areas but they are being built in rural towns and residential neighborhoods effectively destroying the aesthetics of neighborhoods, farmland and pastureland.
Water Pollution – the lithium-ion batteries in BESS contain toxic PFAS. These chemicals are essential components in lithium-ion batteries, including in the electrodes (cathode and anode), binder, electrolyte (main component and additives), and separator (porous membrane). The industry acknowledges that commercial alternatives to such chemicals are 13.5 years away. In the meantime, lithium-ion battery fires will release harmful ‘forever chemicals’ (PFAS) into the environment when extinguished with (uncontained) water from a fire sprinkler system. Read more here.
Noise pollution – each tractor trailer contains it’s own HVAC system (fans) that must run 24/7 at times to maintain battery temperatures and prevent overheating and thermal runaway. Power conversion devices in BESS, such as inverters, emit a continuous humming noise.
The low hum of a BESS facility can penetrate the windows/walls of homes near these facilities and it has been proven that constant low level noise pollution can cause stress related illnesses, high blood pressure, speech interference, hearing loss, sleep disruption, and lost productivity.
Light pollution – BESS facilities must be properly lit 24/7 for safety and observation. This can effect migrating birds and threatens other wildlife by disrupting biological rhythms and interferes with the behavior of nocturnal animals.
Bess facilities also have their own substation which will provide additional noise and light pollution.

No Real Benefit to the Community

BESS facilities are being sold to investors (some foreign owned) and banking groups. We do not want foreign interests and investors to get de-facto control of our power grid. This will become a nightmare scenario of these “for profit” investors to buy electricity at off peak hours and resell high during peak hours. This has the potential to cause electricity costs to sky rocket for consumers as more and more of these facilities are built and controlled by investors and not federal and state regulated utility companies.
Communities are being asked to assume the risks with none of the financial rewards that investors will be making operating these facilities.
BESS facilities that are hooked up to the grid will not provide power to local communities if there is a power outage related to a damaged power line or downed power pole.
These facilities that are tied to the grid will provide no benefit to local communities during a heat wave or extreme cold weather event because the traditional grid uses peaker plants in the rare event that additional power is needed. Note: peaker plants only operate a few hundred hours per year.
Grid issues in CA and TX are being caused by bad policy making by leaders to go to a zero carbon emission electricity source. This is wreaking havoc in these states as renewable energy cannot replicate the efficiency of the traditional power grid.
County commissioners and school districts are being promised big tax incentives for having a BESS facility placed in their communities. However these facilities will not generate the millions in tax revenue being promised as these facilities will depreciate every year.
Property values are estimated to drop ~10-30% of more depending on how close you live in relation to a BESS facility.
There is ZERO indemnity residents and the counties have other than suing the operator’s LLC, the 3rd parties, and battery company when the units fail. What is the value of life, health and property?
BESS operators usually start a local LLC in order to get limited liability protection to protect them when things go wrong – they can simply bankrupt the local LLC while protecting their main organization.

Environmental

Leaking batteries or ones that have burned will require thousands of gallons of water per minute to prevent the fire from spreading. This could devastate local aquifers.
Contaminated water could get into our wells, wetlands, streams and rivers
It only takes 20mg of Lithium to be fatal to a human.
In the event of a fire, lithium gas will destroy wildlife and potentially harm/kill outdoor pets and live stock.
It will disrupt, displace and harm many protected species living on the land. Including bats, monarch butterflies, alligator snapping turtles, hawks and bald eagles.
The sounds of the units running will disrupt the feeding and flights of bats in the area.
Electrical Magnetic Fields of EMF can cause cancer and create other issues for both people and humans.

National Security Risk

Batteries are connected to the grid, making them vulnerable to compromise via remote monitoring systems.
The majority of batteries and components will be manufactured in China, raising concerns about potential backdoor access and security vulnerabilities.
China has a history of installing backdoor access and has successfully hacked into highly protected US systems, including the White House, Pentagon, and Equifax.
An incursion into these systems could have catastrophic consequences for the environment, public health, and the national grid, especially if multiple installations are targeted simultaneously by hackers.
The reliance on Chinese-made components poses a significant national security risk, as it increases the potential for foreign interference and control over critical infrastructure.
Given China’s strategic interests and aggressive cyber warfare capabilities, allowing Chinese-manufactured components in BESS installations poses an unacceptable risk to national security.