Moratorium enacted on battery storage systems

By THANE GRAUEL

The town board has enacted a six-month moratorium on large-scale battery energy storage systems.

The board held a public hearing on the measure Tuesday night and made some changes before passing it unanimously.

Such large-scale systems, known as BESS, have some worried about fires, hazardous material leaks and other incidents, which have occurred around the U.S. There are no such facilities in Pound Ridge, but there are some in Westchester County.

Town Supervisor Kevin Hansan said at an earlier meeting that the storage systems became a sudden issue in the fall, when Putnam County authorized a large commercial battery engineering storage system on the border of Westchester County, near a residential area.

Nicole Shaffer of the Energy Action Committee said her group supports a moratorium “for the town to take a measured, fact-based approach to form appropriate regulations and building codes around BESS based on the forthcoming updated New York state recommendations and the needs around our local ecology, residents and first-responder safety and preparedness.”

But she still had issues with the measure.

“As the current moratorium reads, it has an overly negative bias based more on worst case scenario, fearmongering, than on statistical facts and mitigation against a crucial piece, towards achieving a greener, more resilient grid, and less reliance on fossil fuels,” she told the board.

“And also, more importantly, the moratorium has an unfair negative impact on our homeowners and local small businesses, causing an undue burden on any of them wanting to install a cleaner and quiet backup system with solar,” Shaffer said.

She said as there are time-sensitive state and federal incentives for solar and the backup systems, “there should be an exemption for such scenarios.”

“There’s no reason our residents or small business owners should have to waste valuable time jumping through additional hoops and paying additional fees for a hardship waiver to put a system in place that some of their neighbors already have, especially when they could be losing incentives while they’re being forced to wait,” Shaffer said. 

“It’s wrong, and it’s a hindrance against adoption of what we should be encouraging,” she said.

She said waivers shouldn’t be required for the smaller systems, and noted that the building department already has a system for inspecting and permitting.

John McCown supported the moratorium, but worried about it being repeatedly extended.

“We do not want those,” he said of the large BESS installations. “We do not need those, and it seems like we should have a permanent solution at the end of this six months.”

Town Supervisor Kevin Hansan told the drafters of the measure to stick to the larger systems.

“I would recommend that you guys take the definition of your commercial battery systems on there, also to exclude residential and small businesses.

Stick to commercial because it’s really the permits for commercial battery energy storage systems is really what started this whole process,” Hansan said. 

Asked about the language, Hansan suggested scratching everything else but the commercial, industrial and utility applications.

With those changes made, the board adopted the six-month moratorium unanimously.