North County supervisors say renewable projects should get same treatment as oil and gas

Your weekly dose of local news, arts, and culture. Our News Wire newsletter lands every Thursday with the stories shaping Northern Santa Barbara County

SEND ME THE HEADLINES!

From 2018 to 2023, incidents at battery energy storage system (BESS) facilities dropped by 97 percent. 

That’s not just for fire. It’s for all emergency responses to BESS facilities, Central Coast Community Energy CEO Robert Shaw told the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors on March 11. The number came from a 2024 Electric Power Research Institute white paper, which also states that there’s no guarantee that it captures every BESS incident. 

Battery storage adds reliability to the grid, Shaw said, and lithium batteries respond quickly and are flexible enough to help meet “the grid’s needs on a moment-by-moment basis.” But, he added: “It has to be safe.” 

The January fire at a 300-megawatt BESS in Moss Landing and questions about Nipomo’s recently built 100-megawatt BESS have Santa Barbara County residents concerned about what’s being built near them, the safety procedures in place in case of a fire, and permitting requirements for future BESS facilities. 

The county has already permitted three such projects—two 10-megawatt facilities in Carpinteria and one 3-megawatt facility for the Cuyama solar array—and two BESS facility requests are currently in the planning process, including a 50-megawatt proposal for the Strauss Wind Energy project in Lompoc. Goleta has permitted a 60-megawatt BESS, which is located under Highway 101. 

How the batteries are stored and the type of batteries used are the biggest differences between these projects and the one that caught fire in Moss Landing, according to Shaw and county Fire Marshal Fred Tan. While the Moss Landing facility’s batteries are contained in one large enclosed building, newer projects such as those in Nipomo and Goleta, have batteries stored in outdoor containers that are separated from one another. Moss Landing’s batteries were made up of lithium nickel-manganese-cobalt oxide, while the newer facilities use lithium-ion phosphate. 

They “are more intrinsically stable and less prone to thermal runaway and have a higher temperature threshold,” Tan said. “The containers are designed to confine for the most part, thermal runaway, … prevent propagation of the resulting fire to other containers.” 

Thermal runaway is a frequent culprit in BESS facility fires, where rising temperatures cause a chain reaction that continues to increase temperatures and keep fires going. Those fires can’t be put out with water, as the oxygen in water could heat up a fire even more, Tan said. Time and distance are the best ways to fight these fires, he said, adding that there was recently a Tesla that caught on fire on Highway 101.

“It was, ‘Get out of the car, let the fire do its thing,’” Tan said. “Get away and get upwind of it.” 

In the case of Moss Landing, the battery chemicals released during the fire temporarily polluted nearby waterways and air. Fifth District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino wondered what would happen if the agricultural fields near the one in Nipomo had to be fallowed. Who would be on the hook for that? County counsel responded that it would be on the permit-holder. 

Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson asked whether the county required BESS facilities to hold the same kinds of abandonment bonds or insurance for disasters as it does for oil projects. It doesn’t, unless that BESS is tied to large-scale utility project such as the solar array in Cuyama, according to Errin Briggs with the county’s Energy, Minerals, and Compliance Division. 

The county should hold the same worries for BESS as it does for oil projects such as the recent Sable Offshore Corp. permit transfer discussion, where a big company is selling off a project to a smaller one that could be less financially stable, Nelson said.

“As long as it’s a level playing field, that’s all I’m concerned about,” Nelson said. “Maybe if it’s a legacy project versus this new energy.” 

Environmentalists who spoke during public comment said that renewable energy is necessary for the state’s future and grid reliability and is much safer than legacy energy sources, such as oil and natural gas. 

“Generating and storing energy comes with a risk,” said Lee Heller with the Community Environmental Council. “We need battery storage. This is safer than anything we’ve been doing.”

Lavagnino took issue with statements like that, wondering why people felt the need to bash oil and gas in the face of the real safety concerns with BESS facilities.

“The environmental community needs to get its arms around that clean energy can make mistakes,” he said, adding that renewable energy projects should also require air and groundwater monitoring, similar to oil and gas. “What’s good for one should be good for the other. … We understand that there could be problems with both, and we just need to get our heads around it.” 

For a future ordinance regarding BESS facilities, the supervisors directed staff to take into consideration air quality monitoring, on-site monitoring, the distance for notifying residents, and distance requirements for where to situate the storage facilities.

This article appears in Mar 13-23, 2025.