I firmly believe that Batteries are probably the closest thing to a silver bullet when it comes to our clean energy future. They are going to be the things that let us deploy a lot of solar, and use it through the night. They will ensure the grid stays reliable under stress and extreme weather. And they are going to be a downward force on rising electricity prices.
There are currently around 1 GW of Battery Energy Storage (aka BESS) Projects proposed for the Hudson Valley, and for a lot of folks this looks like it's all coming out of no where all at once. So it's critical that we provide a lot of community forums for people to come and learn more, and get their questions answered by real experts. Especially on the fire safety issue.
Last month, we had one of these in Lagrange, where I live. Members of the town CAC helped organize it, and I helped get the word out through our CCL contacts. The program had:
- Professor Jeff Seidman from Vassar College giving an overview of how Batteries work to save money and increase grid resilience, and why we're seeing them come up now.
- Weronika Polanco, Battery Energy Storage Specialist at NYSERDA, talking about NYSERDA's perspectives on BESS and the future of the NY Grid
- Dan Murray, Chief of Hazmat at FDNY - talking about fire safety and fire standards from a fire fighter POV.
We had pretty solid turn out. You can see in the below video, which was about an hour of presentation, and then an hour and half of Q&A. Critically important, a lot of the local fire department was there, so they could ask key questions. You can watch it in full below.
This is just the beginning of this story, as the Town is having a public hearing on a potential BESS moratorium tomorrow night, that I need to go out and speak up at. It's important to me that these systems get evaluated on their merrits, not just a blanket ban be constructed on them.