Battery storage facility on hold amid opposition
After a proposed League City battery storage facility was met with vehement opposition from residents of a nearby neighborhood, the project developer has paused the city approval process to allow for more public meetings and outreach.
The City Council was originally scheduled to vote April 9 on whether to allow Cypress Creek Renewables to build Berkman Storage, a 200-megawatt lithium battery storage system, at the corner of Washington Street and Texas 3.
The facility would be designed to provide backup power to homes and businesses and is projected by the developer to generate an estimated $9.8 million tax benefit to the community.
The proposed site is around 500 feet from the Oaks of Clear Creek neighborhood and 1,500 feet from Parr Elementary School. The project has twice been unanimously denied by the League City Planning and Zoning Commission, most recently on March 4.
“The community’s input is extremely important to us,” said Cypress Creek Renewables spokesperson Parker Sloan in an email to the Houston Chronicle. “The fact that there were questions that came out of the planning and zoning meeting led us to decide that additional community outreach was essential before moving forward. We hope to gather as much input as possible from residents before our next steps.”
Christine Thomas, a resident of Oaks of Clear Creek for more than 30 years, learned about the project just days before the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on March 4 by way of a misshapen city public hearing notice sign on the corner of a busy Texas 3.
“It’s about the size of a garage sale sign, and it was bent in half, so you could not read it without stopping and taking a picture of it, which on Highway 3 is a little foolish,” said Thomas, 73. “The delivery of information like that is pretty shoddy, and it’s no way to let citizens know about potential hazards in their community.”
What is BESS?
At the March meeting, Sloan compared the Battery Energy Storage System, or BESS, to that of a cellphone re-energizing while its user is asleep so that stored power can be used when it’s most needed.
The company, which develops and owns solar and storage projects throughout the United States, further explained in an email that rows of small batteries stacked together create one big battery, which is then connected to the electric grid, and in the event of an unexpected storm or a prolonged heat wave, that power would be ready to be used.
Thomas and others say they’re worried that fires could occur or that fumes could be released by the process.
“If these things are really necessary — and I am not convinced they are — why can’t they be built where people are not around?” Thomas said.
Timmothy Dodson, 42, a certified safety professional and an Oaks resident, worries that the emergency response system touted by Cypress Creek Renewables is too new and referred to an explosion at a lithium-ion battery storage system at the McMicken Battery ESS in Surprise, Ariz., in 2019, which injured several first responders.
Drey Hicks, a spokesperson for the city, said in an email that the batteries housed at the facility would be lithium-ion batteries, and that will be no specific chemicals being stored in the facility outside of the chemicals the exist within a lithium-ion battery.
Sloan said the area of the proposed project is close to an electrical substation in need of more capacity “and all the neighboring parcels are zoned industrial and commercial.”
He also cited a report published by the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit energy research and development organization, which said that BESS incidents since 2012 registered a failure rate of less than 2%, and that these incidents had no impact outside the of the facility.
Sloan said the company held a community meeting last July at Parr Elementary School, inviting residents who lived within a 300foot radius, and reached out to the HOA of the Oaks neighborhood.
Company leaders also studied environmental considerations and met with local fire officials to develop an emergency plan, he said.
At the March meeting, League City Fire Marshal Lee Darrow told members of the Planning and Zoning Commission the department had not received training for an emergency response plan.
Thomas and others had planned to attend the previously planned April meeting, where they expected to present a petition in opposition to the project that has so far collected more than 700 signatures.
“This (30-day extension) feels very much like a delay tactic to calm down the serious concerns and high level of opposition,” she said.
According to Cypress Creek Renewables, of the estimated $9.8 million in tax benefit to the community, over half would go to Clear Creek Independent School District, with the remainder going to League City and Galveston County.
To Oaks resident Darlene Peaks, 75, any potential tax incentives to the city aren’t worth the anxieties of living near the facility.
“When I moved here to this community, it was mostly farmland with cows grazing,” she said. “Maybe I should have had foresight that it wasn’t going to be farmland forever, and I am not against development, but this is different. My life is worth more than any tax benefits.”
Cypress Creek Renewables, according to Sloan, plans to “redouble our efforts to engage residents and community groups” and will be publishing more information available to the public in the coming weeks.
An applicant for a separate storage facility, a 10-megawatt facility that would be located at Caroline and FM 646, has asked to appear on the city council’s March 26 agenda. That application was also denied by the Planning and Zoning Commission in February.
These battery storage facilities are part of a growing trend in the U.S. and Texas that comes as developers dive into the state’s erratic electricity market and look to boost energy supply as demand for electricity grows. ERCOT reports that one megawatt can power about 200 Texas homes during peak demand.