Clean-energy advocates and their media mouthpieces continue to tout electrification goals that rely on significant battery-storage components. And advances in this field and related solar-energy continue to show promise. But in fact, the proposed battery compounds are highly controversial in many residential communities. Episodic fires at these sites raise alarms, and can entail significant repair costs even where no lives were in imminent danger, as per today’s account in Newsday of the fallout from a May incident in New York’s East Hampton town. Earlier this year, residents of Hampton Bays, a middle-class hamlet of the adjoining town of Southampton, rose in protest of a planned lithium-battery site that officials were nearly ready to greenlight. The town has subsequently backed off. In the Hamptons, as in many affluent areas, alternative-energy activists have been pushing for “Community Choice Aggregation” plans that allow ratepayers to opt out of the local utility’s service (often fossil-fuel based) in favor of what is usually a localized solar source. Such sustainability options can entail reliance on batteries, while it’s increasingly apparent that many neighbors will have a problem with just where they are stored. Chalk this up as another reason the attainment of “net zero” carbon-energy targets is far from cheap or easy.
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/environment/east-hampton-battery-storage-facility-fire-yskzij3q
Tim W. Ferguson 