Battery Energy Storage Systems
What are battery energy storage systems?
Battery Storage Systems (BESS) are generally shipping container sized buildings that contain lithium Ion batteries and electronics to interface them to the grid. Currently private individuals lease land to energy companies for around 40yrs to allow their land to be used, and they can make a lot of money for this £1500 per MW/year, with a £10,000 signing bonus.
These energy companies buy electricity when it is cheap and store it in the batteries and then release it when the cost of electricity is high, therefore making profit. This generally correlates with surplus electricity from renewables such as wind and solar. These are not government lead projects, they are private individuals and companies who stand to make a lot of money, at the expense of those who live next to them.
Why are we objecting to this?
Fire Risk and Risk to people, animals, property and the Environment.
63 major energy storage failure events have been documented globally since 2011. In many of those, people have sustained significant, life changing injuries. See here and here. 560 batteries have the explosive force of 1500 tonnes of TNT, all of which will be under 100m from numerous dwellings (see picture right, dwellings marked in red).
Lithium Fires are very hard to control and require HUGE quantise of water (millions of litres for a single fire) which produces toxic chemical clouds including hydrogen fluoride and contaminates the local ground water.
Fire services recommend 2000 L/min for 2hrs (240,000 L), however in Australia they were using water for days not hours to control a fire.
Read here about the BESS fire in Liverpool and the recommendations from the fire brigade such as blast walls!
Noise Pollution
Noise is an important public health issue. It has negative impacts on human health and well-being and is a growing concern. The WHO Regional Office for Europe has developed these guidelines, based on the growing understanding of these health impacts of exposure to environmental noise.
BESS are notoriously noisy! This is because they require cooling mechanisms for the battery container/cubes, inverters, the LV to MV transformers and the primary transformer. Cumulatively the average noise emitted by a 5MWh container is 75dB. Some sources state a noise emission of 70-95 dB measured 1m from the unit. A BESS facility comprising of several hundred battery units can easily produce noise levels over 70 decibels at residences located 100 ft from the site (BESS noise monitoring). Even with noise mitigating measures Fithie BESS will likely exceed the acceptable noise levels.
The level by which the rating level exceeds the prevailing background sound level indicates the following potential impacts as specified in BS4142: (1) A difference of 10dB is likely to have a significant adverse effect. (2) 5dB is likely to have an adverse effect. In Balnuith the background level of noise is very quiet 27dB as measured by Banks Energy. We will perform our own assessment, but we believe that 650 Air conditioning units up wind, and in close proximity to dwellings will have a significant adverse effect.
Click here and here to hear for yourself how noisy BESS are!
Flood Risk
The Fithie Burn floods regularly, in fact in 2023 on 3 separate occasions the road was not passable due to water. The purple on the SEPA flood map to the right shows high surface flood risk, the blue shows high risk river flooding. The red box is the proposed BESS site. Converting more farmland to concrete will increase the surface run off and increase the flood risk. This will impact those who live here and potentially even the existing Tealing substation (shown in yellow).
Cumulative Impact
Tealing is a beautiful rural village. Construction on the extension of the existing Tealing substation began in 2021. We have endured years of construction, noise and disruption. The screening trees were cut down and now residents see substation infrastructure instead of rural countryside. SSEN are about to submit a planning application for a further 400kV substation which is 50% larger than the new and old sub stations combined. The cumulative effect of all of this industrialisation will destroy the beautiful village that many call home. See the map to the left of all the current and proposed planning applications show in green, pink and purple.
Shown in red are dwellings that are potentially being surrounded by industrial development with all the associated negative impacts on quality of life and house prices.
Loss of Agricultural Land
This is prime agricultural land as identified by the Scottish Government (class 3.1) (click here).
Food production is important. If we don’t produce our own food we will need to import it. Lincolnshire council has recently rejected plans for a 43 hectare solar farm on those ground, will our council be equally sensible? BBC article regarding this can be found here.
Lack of Transparency
There has been no communication to local residents regarding multiple planning applications. We have found out about the proposed developments by searching the ECU website or coincidentally through friends, even when local property addresses are named on the actual application itself. This is deception. We are not being given time to prepare and to counter these multiple applications. We ask that Angus Council reject these applications and consider the impact on the local population.
List of proposed Battery Sites
| Site Name | MegaWatts / Number of Batteries | URL to site |
|---|---|---|
| Myreton BESS | 650 MW / 450 Batteries | Link |
| Balnuith BESS | 100 MW / 50 Batteries | Link |
| Fithie Energy Park | 1400 MW / 560 Batteries | Link |
What can you do?
Subscribe, sign our petition and send an objection to your local councillor.
