FDNY officers and environmental advocates insisted Tuesday that New York Metropolis’s rigorous evaluate system makes lithium-ion battery storage services protected sufficient to reside subsequent to throughout a tense Metropolis Council oversight listening to the place lawmakers and residents pressed issues about hearth dangers and services deliberate near properties and faculties.
Chief Thomas Currao, who leads the FDNY’s Bureau of Hearth Prevention, stated the division’s multilayered security checks have made town’s oversight “the benchmark for the safety of urban energy storage systems.”
“The FDNY represents a multi-step safety gateway,” Currao stated, detailing full-scale hearth testing, plan opinions, and inspections earlier than any website is permitted. “We have code that is widely recognized as the most robust, comprehensive, and strict in the country.”
Lithium-ion battery power storage programs, generally known as BESS, retailer renewable power and launch it when demand peaks, typically on sweltering days when the grid is strained. Supporters say they’re key to changing fossil-fuel “peaker” crops, significantly in dense cities.
Power storage services, or battery farms, are popping up citywide as New York state strikes from 359 to six,000 megawatts of storage to satisfy clean-energy mandates. Their arrival has seen sustained protest from locals throughout Staten Island, Queens, and Brooklyn who’ve fumed about their lack of enter.
In 2023, a number of battery fires occurred throughout New York, smoldering intermittently for days from Jefferson County within the north to Orange County within the south. In January, a fireplace at one of many world’s largest BESS crops in Northern California compelled the evacuation of about 1,500 folks and shut down a serious freeway.
Hearth incidents like these have solely amplified scrutiny of BESS in residential areas.
Below metropolis code, battery farms could also be sited as shut as 10 ft from neighboring properties, a normal that residents and a few lawmakers argue wants fine-tuning in a dense, row-house metropolis.
Would FDNY reside subsequent door to 1?
Anxiousness additionally persists amongst residents who proceed to affiliate lithium batteries with the tons of of fires attributable to uncertified e-bike units every year.
FDNY officers careworn the excellence at Tuesday’s Committee on Hearth and Emergency Administration.
Chief Joseph Loftus, who heads the division’s hazardous supplies unit, stated greater than 90 % of the battery fires FDNY responds to contain uncertified client merchandise — not industrial storage programs like these being constructed across the metropolis.
“When it comes down to battery energy storage systems… these are highly engineered,” Loftus stated. “They have what they call a battery management system. If there’s a failure, it shuts down beforehand. We can remotely monitor it. It regulates the battery’s health.”
Loftus cited nationwide knowledge that he stated exhibits progress in know-how has coincided with declining threat.
“We’ve had a 98 percent decrease in fires in these highly engineered systems,” he stated, regardless of what he described as a 25,000-percent improve in installations over the previous six years.
FDNY Chief Thomas Currao, Chief of Prevention, and Chief Joseph Loftus, Performing Chief of Hazmat Operations, together with metropolis officers Kathleen Schmidt, and Elijah Hutchinson, testify earlier than the Metropolis CouncilPhoto by Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit.
Committee Chair Joann Ariola, who represents components of Queens, pushed FDNY officers to again up their confidence in private phrases.
When requested whether or not he would really feel snug residing subsequent door to a battery website, Loftus responded, “As for safety reasons, yes, I would be very confident in the fire department, the technology that’s allowed in there… I would be confident that the fire department can handle a situation.”
Ariola shot again: “You might be the only person in New York City who feels that way… people in my community and many others don’t feel safe because these battery energy storage systems are going into residential areas when they could be put in more industrial areas.”
“We’re not against clean energy,” she added. “We’re against placing these facilities right on top of our communities.”
‘How stupid is this?’
Council Member Robert Holden of Queens joined Chair Joann Ariola in urgent officers on why large-scale lithium-ion battery storage programs have been being positioned in residential neighborhoods relatively than industrial zones.
Holden stated one proposed website in his district could be “right across from a cage with over 1,100 students,” calling the choice “a farce.”
“Would you worry about your kids going to that school?” he requested FDNY officers. “When you said you can’t put out the fire, you let them burn? There’s thermal runaway in the air that could be deadly to human beings.”
FDNY Chief Joseph Loftus acknowledged that within the occasion of a lithium-ion battery hearth, the division’s technique typically entails containing the blaze relatively than extinguishing it outright.
“We could [put them out], but I wouldn’t,” Loftus stated. “By putting them out, you could have an explosion. There’s gas that could trap it, so we let them burn. That’s the policy that we have in the FDNY.”
Holden stated that the response strengthened his fears concerning the know-how’s security. “Other cities and states have put this in industrial areas,” he stated. “But New York City, which is very congested, crowded, and everybody’s on top of one another, we think it should be right across from schools? How stupid is this?”
He accused town of prioritizing personal builders and zoning flexibility over public security. “We’ve been sold out,” Holden stated. “The administration is telling us, well, we’re not really siting these, the City of Yes allows this. Are you kidding? This is such a farce.”
He urged the Council to impose strict setback guidelines and relocate battery storage to manufacturing zones. “We need zoning on this,” Holden stated. “We need to have these in industrial areas away from residential, because people are afraid.”
BESS: This method is used to retailer renewable power after which use it when wanted.Photograph by Getty Pictures
Officers from the Mayor’s Workplace of Local weather and Environmental Justice defended the coverage, saying batteries must be positioned close to the place the electrical energy is consumed to stabilize the grid.
“You need these storage units in the areas that are actually using the energy,” stated Govt Director Elijah Hutchinson. “If they’re too far away, they don’t provide those local benefits to the residents that need them.”
Holden pressed again, arguing that upstate New York hosts services miles from populated areas. “Upstate, sometimes it’s 10 miles away,” he stated. “Tell me why it’s different upstate than it is here.”
Hutchinson responded that New York Metropolis’s dense city grid makes its infrastructure basically totally different.
“The upstate grid is much more dispersed,” he stated. “Their substations are farther apart. In the city, we have many smaller substations that serve different, tighter footprints. The relationship of the energy storage station to the larger distribution grid directs where the energy can be helpful when it’s being used.”
‘Safer than fossil fuels’
Clear-energy and labor teams urged lawmakers to not stall the transition, arguing the programs are wanted to retire energy crops that pump air pollution into susceptible neighborhoods.
Pete Sikora, local weather and inequality campaigns director for New York Communities for Change, stated opponents at Tuesday’s listening to have been “fear-mongering” the dangers of power storage and ignoring the hazards posed by present fossil-fuel infrastructure.
Sikora stated the problem was private for his group’s members, who battle with excessive power prices, pollution-related sickness, and the results of local weather change.
“This issue is serious to our members, because we pay high bills. People are getting sick from asthma and other health-related illnesses. Climate crisis is a very serious threat, as we saw in Sandy, and our members need good jobs,” he stated.
He argued that BESS may assist decrease prices and enhance reliability.
“So BESS provides those things. It shifts energy to another time you can store it. That means you can save money on utility bills — very valuable stuff — and fear-mongering against it shouldn’t be acceptable,” he stated.
Sikora insisted that the programs are protected and in contrast them to on a regular basis applied sciences.
“This is not a dangerous device,” he stated. “There are millions of these things in all our pockets. EVs are not dangerous — this is not a dangerous technology.”
Environmental advocates echoed that town’s requirements are already the strongest within the nation. “Concerns about fire safety are certainly understandable,” stated Alia Soomro of the New York League of Conservation Voters. “But FDNY leads the nation in fire prevention and safety protocols.”
Labor leaders additionally warned that slowing deployment would imply misplaced work. “Batteries help meet our climate goals, but they also can create good union jobs with family-sustaining wages, health and retirement benefits,” stated Josh Kellerman of Local weather Jobs New York.
Thomas McGuire of IBEW Native 3 stated his members have the coaching wanted to put in and keep the know-how safely. “When installed correctly by power professionals with appropriate rules and regulations,” he stated, “the future can and will be brighter.”
Enjoying with hearth
In the meantime, the residents who’re seeing the ‘battery farms’ pop up of their neighborhoods testified Tuesday that they really feel like unwilling experiment topics in a know-how they imagine has not but confirmed long-term security.
Queens lady Jasmin Lawrence lives on one hundred and eightieth Avenue and Linden Boulevard in St. Albans, the place firm NineDot Power is proposing a BESS “immediately adjacent” to her residence.
“They say that these battery farms are safe, but safe for how long?” she informed the committee. “There is no evidence that these lithium-ion battery farms will be safe one, five, 10, or 20 years from now… This proposed battery farm would be 10 feet from our house.”
She famous that her household is now in a authorized combat with the clear power agency based in 2015 and primarily based on the NYU City Future Lab on the NYU Tandon Faculty of Engineering in Downtown Brooklyn. The authorized battle started when NineDot Power sued to realize entry to their property for the event of the positioning.
Jasmin and her husband countersued alongside the Addisleigh Park Civic Affiliation. A listening to is anticipated in Queens County Supreme Court docket subsequent month.
“How do you lay your head down to sleep in peace,” she requested, “when your child’s bedroom is 10 feet away” from a possible hazard?
Locals have joined the Lawrence household in protesting towards the plant each week. Final week, the developer behind a proposed Staten Island e-battery storage website pulled the plug after sustained neighborhood protest.
One other resident, Andrea Scarborough, a board member of the Southeast Queens Residential Environmental Justice Coalition, urged the council to go a decision asking the New York State Legislature and governor to approve A.6955-A/S.7197, which goals to make sure battery power storage programs are positioned an acceptable distance away from close by properties.
“Placement of these facilities near our homes benefits developers, not residents,” she stated.
Her husband, William Scarborough, president of the Addisleigh Park Civic Group and a former state meeting member, echoed that concern.
“We are not saying don’t build them,” he stated. “We’re just saying don’t put them right up on our homes… Neither the FDNY nor developers can guarantee that these facilities will not catch fire.”
Scarborough stated town’s present zoning insurance policies permit such initiatives “without any public review” and urged the Council to vary that course of.
Council Member Ariola thanked the residents and stated their testimony underscored her level that battery power storage programs “do not belong in residential areas.”
“This is about developers,” she stated. “This is about money… You are the people who need to be heard.”
Chatting with New York News after the listening to, Council Member Ariola stated she felt metropolis officers failed to supply clear solutions concerning the well being and security impacts of lithium-ion battery storage websites throughout, and vowed to push laws requiring a 1,000-foot buffer between these services and close by properties, faculties, or church buildings.
Ariola careworn that residents ‘do not feel safe’ with lithium battery storage models positioned in residential areas and calling town’s strategy a matter of ‘developers looking to make a buck.’Photograph by Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit.
The council member stated she left the listening to with none new data that might ease residents’ fears.
“I did not learn anything that I could bring to my communities to allay their fears about these battery storage units,” she stated. “Nor was I given any reason from the administration why they’re arbitrarily placing them in residential communities.”
“The fire department always does their job, and it is their intention to make sure that those battery energy storage centers are safe,” Ariola stated. “However, they had to admit that these are fires that cannot be put out — they’re fires that have to burn out.”
Ariola stated which means doubtlessly dangerous emissions may escape into the air throughout a fireplace, and that town had no knowledge on what these emissions would possibly comprise.
“I was very upset with the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice because they didn’t have any answers at all,” she stated. “They didn’t have any studies at all, and they didn’t have any interest at all in finding out how it could negatively impact the air quality when these BESS are in residential areas.”
Ariola, who co-sponsored the setback decision with Holden, stated she expects motion on the measure by early subsequent yr.
“These are not good neighbors,” she stated. “These are developers looking to make a buck.”
