‘We are playing with fire’: Fears persist over battery storage

Robert Holden is worried about one of New York City’s five boroughs going up in flames.

“It makes absolutely zero sense why, now, these facilities are being sited practically in people’s backyards, and next to gas stations, all over Staten Island,” says the city councillor.

“Simply put, it is not just a bad policy, but a dangerous one, and the city is literally playing with fire by allowing this to happen.”

Holden is talking about proposals to build more battery energy storage system (Bess) centres – large-scale power storage sites based on the same lithium-ion batteries that are used in laptops and electric cars.

The batteries are stored, thousands together, in large metal boxes.

Such facilities are increasingly springing up all over the world, with 21.9 gigawatt-hours installed in Europe last year alone, according to industry group SolarPower Europe. That’s enough to power some 16 million homes.

And there’s a need for a great many more. Achieving net zero by 2050 – or getting anywhere near it – requires a massive shift to renewable power sources such as solar and wind.

And electricity produced by such renewables can go to waste unless it can be stored and then delivered at a time when it’s needed, such as everyone turning on the lights in the evening. And that’s where Bess come in.