Representatives from Schatz Energy Research Center and the Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA) addressed a public meeting in Arcata last Wednesday to quell fears and answer questions about energy storage facilities. 

Energy storage facilities, as the name implies, stores energy harnessed by energy generators like wind or solar and then puts it into the grid when needed, e.g. if a lot of people are using electricity at once or when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. 

The meeting was attended by around 80 people, filled out by both skeptics and supporters, as well as dozens of the merely curious. Energy storage is a contentious topic; last month, Blue Lake’s city council killed its agreement with a Texas-based energy developer to turn an old power plant into a lithium-iron-phosphate storage facility. Some Blue Lake residents had criticized the project for its potentially damaging environmental effects, as well as the risk of fire, a subject the RCEA representatives and attendees spent a fair amount of time talking about.

It’s a reasonable concern, said the representatives, who included Power Resources Director Rich Engel and RCEA board member/Humboldt County Supervisor Natalie Arroyo. January’s Moss Landing Fire damaged over 50,000 lithium-ion batteries at the facility, and forced 1,500 people to evacuate. It was a preventable incident, the speakers said, caused by insufficient barriers between battery cells and the “lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide” batteries, more prone to thermal runaway — a cycle between energy and temperature where each variable increasing forces the other one to do the same with no stopping point. Better safety standards make a repeat of the fire less likely. 

There are hundreds of battery storage facilities around California that contain over 13,000 megawatts of energy every year, and 20.6 of those are being stored in lithium-ion batteries in Humboldt. There’s a small microgrid for the Arcata-Eureka Airport that has a battery capacity of 2.2 megawatts, and an almost-finished solar panel farm near Arcata has its own battery storage big enough to hold 2.5 megawatts. RCEA has also installed solar and battery systems at 16 remote fire stations and are planning more for housing for elderly tribal members and public facilities. 

The presenters stressed that most battery storage facilities are safe and effective, though the concerns are real.

“There are risks of being on the bleeding edge of innovation,” Engel said.