Responding to a serious hearth in January at a battery storage plant in Moss Touchdown that despatched a poisonous cloud over a large space and triggered the evacuations of residents and the closure of Freeway 1, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors late Tuesday took the primary steps towards a ban on new battery vegetation within the county for a 12 months or extra whereas new security guidelines are drafted.
With out remark, the supervisors allowed the proposal from Supervisor Glenn Church, whose district contains Moss Touchdown, to maneuver ahead. It requires the county workers in 30 days to attract up language for a moratorium on the development of recent vegetation or the growth of current ones, and ship it to the supervisors for a vote.
“I’m trying to address a way for the county to have some input into sensitive areas like Moss Landing, but also elsewhere throughout the county,” Church stated through the assembly.
Church stated earlier this week that he hopes Monterey County will go native guidelines affecting the place battery storage vegetation will be constructed, hearth security, emergency administration insurance policies, and post-fire cleanup guidelines.
“We really need to have a set of ordinances that will address the health and safety of people in the community as well as the environment,” he added at Tuesday’s assembly.
California has seen an enormous enhance within the progress of battery storage vegetation in recent times, going from 17 in 2019 to 187 at the moment. Many extra are deliberate throughout the Bay Space, within the Central Valley and Southern California.
The vegetation retailer electrical energy identical to batteries in cell telephones, laptops, or electrical automobiles.
They primarily permit renewable vitality to energy the state 24 hours a day, making it a viable different to fossil fuels like pure fuel and coal. The vegetation are wanted to retailer electrical energy generated by giant photo voltaic and wind farms to launch it again on the ability grid at evening when the solar isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing. California lawmakers have set a purpose of producing 100% of the state’s electrical energy from renewable and carbon-free sources by 2045 to satisfy the state’s local weather change and air air pollution objectives.
Neighborhood advocates close to the Moss Touchdown web site — which remains to be being demolished and cleaned up beneath supervision of the U.S. Environmental Safety Company — say they help extra native guidelines.
One other battery storage facility caught hearth on Aug. 30 in Monterey County. In that blaze, on the California Flats Vitality Storage Challenge, a photo voltaic farm close to the agricultural neighborhood of Parkfield, led sheriff’s officers to difficulty an evacuation warning for folks in a 2-mile radius of the blaze. It was extinguished inside 24 hours.
Officers from Arevon, an Arizona firm that owns the power, stated 4 of 84 Tesla battery packs on the web site burned. The photo voltaic farm offers electrical energy to PG&E and Apple. There have been no accidents.
A number of different areas in California are shifting ahead with native regulation of battery vegetation.
Final 12 months, Solano County, within the North Bay, authorized a moratorium of recent battery storage vegetation after residents raised security issues. In August, Solano County supervisors lifted it, however put in place new guidelines permitting the services to be constructed solely on land zoned for industrial or manufacturing makes use of, somewhat than agriculture, residential or different makes use of.
Orange County officers enacted an emergency moratorium on new large-scale battery storage services in February, following the Moss Touchdown hearth, whereas county officers there work with hearth departments to draft new native laws.
And Santa Cruz County is engaged on new guidelines as nicely which might be anticipated to go earlier than the board of supervisors in mid-November. A Massachusetts firm, New Leaf, has proposed to construct a 200-megawatt battery storage plant on Minto Highway in Watsonville, close to farm fields, properties and faculties.
Native residents have organized to oppose it.
Renewable vitality business teams are opposing the moratoriums. They are saying the expertise is crucial for California to attain its local weather and renewable vitality objectives.
That measure, SB 283, was supported by renewable vitality firms and labor unions, each of whom opposed extra far-reaching proposals that died within the Legislature this 12 months, comparable to makes an attempt to ban the development of battery vegetation inside 3,200 toes of properties, faculties, companies and parks.
“Now is not the time to put up roadblocks to building vital clean energy resources,” stated Scott Murtishaw, government director of the California Vitality Storage Alliance, an business group whose members embrace Vistra, Tesla, Arevon and New Leaf.
