Copyright berkshireeagle
LANESBOROUGH — A California energy developer has proposed a massive battery storage field for a parcel near the Route 7-Route 8 Connector Road — a 170-megawatt facility that could be worth $10 million in payments to the town over 20 years. The $100 million facility, proposed by Mission Clean Energy of San Francisco, would consist of 200 shipping container-sized structures, each containing racks of lithium iron phosphate batteries that would tie into Eversource’s Partridge Substation in Pittsfield. It would be sited on a parcel stretching between the Connector Road and Crane Avenue in Pittsfield, and screened from public view. The facility, known as the Pear Tree Energy Center, would store excess energy from the grid during periods of low demand and release it back to the grid during peak demand. It would essentially operate as a small power plant for four hours when fully charged, with construction starting at the end of 2028 or the beginning of 2029 and operation beginning about a year later. Estimated revenue to Lanesborough is $500,000 per year — or $10 million over the 20-year life of the project — in negotiated payments in lieu of taxes and/or a community host agreement. The parcels are listed as 0 Partridge Road in Lanesborough and an adjacent parcel at 0 Crane Ave. in Pittsfield. They are owned by Douglas King, who has optioned the two parcels to Pear Tree Energy Center. If that location doesn't work out, Mission Clean Energy will look to other sites in Lanesborough. ABOUT THE PROJECT A team of four people approached the Lanesborough Select Board on Monday night to present the plan, including a map showing the proposed location of the battery storage facility. Emma Riley, the development manager for the project, said the developer has completed its environmental site assessment on the 200-plus acre site, as well as field surveys for threatened and endangered species and a wetlands delineation. She said the battery field won’t be near any mapped vernal pools or near the one mapped wetlands area on the site. Only 15 to 20 acres of the more than 200-acre site will be used. The facility will emit about 60 to 65 decibels of noise at the perimeter of the site during peak operation. Ethan Frazier, senior permitting manager for Mission Clean Energy, said the site “really allows us to have a project that will not be seen or heard." The battery field will be surrounded by a 6- to 8-foot fence that might include colored fabric as well as trees, shrubs and or bushes between the fence and the Connector Road. Construction is expected to start following permitting at the end of 2028 or the beginning of 2029. At the end of its 20-year lifespan, the battery field will be decommissioned. Mission Clean Energy development consultant Russ Edwards said the battery storage facility will have a light impact on the town. “It’s not asking for infrastructure from the town,” he said. “Nor is it putting additional burden on the town such as … more children in the school systems, more cars on the roads, more households for EMS services to look after. This is a very high-dollar investment without those sort of ongoing demands.” When lithium batteries overheat, they can catch fire in what is known as “thermal runaway.” The chain reaction generates more heat than it can release, causing a fire or explosion that is difficult to extinguish. Thermal runaway fires attributed to e-bikes rendered an Amherst apartment building uninhabitable earlier this month and destroyed a shed at Soldier On in Pittsfield in June. In April, the 750-megawatt Moss Landing battery storage facility in Monterey, Calif., one of the world’s largest and much larger than what’s proposed in Lanesborough, burst into flames and burned for more than two days. Officials declared an emergency over air quality concerns and evacuated 1,200 people. Days later, the Los Angeles Times reported that scientists at San Jose State University discovered high concentrations of heavy metals including nickel, manganese and cobalt — the materials used in lithium ion batteries — in soil samples taken at a nature preserve about 2.5 miles away. Adam Jakubowski, a senior consultant at Energy Safety Response Group and a professional firefighter, spoke to the Select Board about the risk of fire. He said the project will need to meet the latest National Fire Protection Association guidelines. “None of the equipment in these installations can be present without [Underwriters Laboratories] testing and listings on every single component,” Jakubowski said. “And not just every single component. They put all of those pieces together, and together they test them as a system to make sure that it works as intended and it can handle what it is supposed to.” Jakubowski said the battery management system will be designed to shut down the operation if there is any sign of trouble. It will also have detectors and thermal management “to keep them cool when operating and also to warm them up in the winter.” Select Board Chair Deborah Maynard asked what type of response would be required of the town and whether special training would be required of the fire department. Jakubowski said that will depend on what the Fire Department requests. “I have not met with a department that did not have the capabilities to respond to such a site,” Jakubowski said. Mission Clean Energy met with Lanesborough Fire Inspector Thomas Rathbun prior to the meeting with the Select Board. Rathbun said he was impressed by what he heard and noted that Lanesborough already has a smaller battery storage facility at a solar array near the proposed site. "I believe that they’re very safe,” he said. While Mission Clean Energy prefers to go through a local permitting process, it may end up in a consolidated permitting process overseen by the Massachusetts Energy Facility Siting Board. “Electricity is one of the few commodities out there that you have to both produce and consume roughly in the same instant that it's created,” said Michael Judge, undersecretary of energy at the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. “The ability to store it really changes the way that these markets work and can significantly lower costs for ratepayers." Having battery storage can shift peak demand, Judge said, and can lower the need for investment in transmission and distribution systems. If the project application is filed after July 1, 2026, permitting will be handled through the Energy Facility Siting Board in a full adjudicatory process, Judge said. Lanesborough would be granted automatic intervenor status as the host community and would be able to apply for funding to pay for hiring expert witnesses, lawyers and dedicating administrative staff. “We really tried to make sure that there's a lot of opportunities for municipalities to engage,” Judge said. Judge said he believes battery storage fields are safe and getting safer. “There are some highly publicized incidents of things where things went wrong, but this is a rapidly changing and improving technology,” he said. “There's much better standards in place today than there were even just a few years ago. "We are developing a much more robust set of rules and standards that these facilities have to adhere to when they're going through the permitting process at the local and state level," Judge said. "These facilities are providing really a huge amount of value to the grid.”
