Vital infrastructure or storing up trouble? Debate over battery farms continues to rage 

Rising electricity demands, renewable energy goals, and soaring energy bills all mean the need for such facilities is real, if not critical

The McMicken Battery Energy Storage facility at the edge of the desert suburb of Surprise, Arizona. Picture: Peoria Fire and Medical Department, Arizona.

In the split second before US firefighter Captain Hunter Clare lost consciousness, he saw his thermal imaging camera suddenly flicker red and then “Boom. The building exploded.”

It was his last clear memory for over two months.

Clare and his hazmat (hazardous material) team of firefighters at Peoria Fire-Medical Department had been investigating a suspected battery fire at the McMicken Battery Energy Storage facility at the edge of the desert suburb of Surprise, Arizona, on April 19, 2019. 

Shipping container-sized metal boxes housing hundreds of lithium-ion battery cells were seeping milky-white smoke and in a highly volatile state known as thermal runaway.

Clare bore the brunt of the catastrophic explosion which followed. 

He was blown through a chain link fence and 70ft into the desert.

US firefighter Captain Hunter Clare bore the brunt of the catastrophic explosion at the McMicken Battery Energy Storage facility at the edge of the desert suburb of Surprise, Arizona, on April 19, 2019. Picture: Youtube

“One of my guys, when he came back to consciousness, he was still holding the hose line and looked out in the desert and saw this bush on fire, and so he put water on it. 

And lucky he did, because that was me burning in the bush,” he tells the Irish Examiner.

“I suffered a traumatic brain injury. I lost vision and a portion of my right eye. I broke my neck — C4, 5, and 6.

“I broke my back in several places. I shattered my right scapula into five pieces. I broke a bunch of ribs. I lacerated my liver and was bleeding out inside. 

"I broke my hands. I amputated my feet, from tumbling across the desert, but they were trapped in their boots. So, they had to reattach those. My feet were broken also. I had to learn to walk again. They called me three times,” he says matter-of-factly.

Clare, now Peoria fire chief, also suffered a mixture of thermal and chemical burns as a result of the gas cocktail of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, and ethane that batteries can produce in a fire. 

He will never be cleared to return to the truck as a frontline firefighter or hazmat technician and now leads training in best practices for firefighters to address the hazards of lithium-ion battery fires for state agencies and the International Association of Fire Fighters.

‘Unless we go to nuclear energy, it’s our future’

Battery energy storage systems — also known as battery farms — is a growing industry in Ireland but it has seen an equal rise in local opposition to them.

Just last week, a new group formed to fight proposals for a massive 300-acre solar farm and battery storage facility close to the East Cork town of Carrigtwohill.

However, rising electricity demands (from the State as well as data and AI centres), renewable energy goals, and soaring energy bills all mean the need for such facilities is real, if not critical.

Eirgrid is predicting a 45% rise in electricity demand between now and 2034 which will put considerable pressure on the national grid. 

The superpower of battery storage systems is their ability to stabilise that grid. 

They store excess electricity from unpredictable renewable (wind and solar) energy sources and release it back into the national grid when demand is high, keeping an even balance between the two.

“Their main purpose is to stabilise the grid for a short duration of time,” explains Robert Lynch, associate professor in Energy at the Department of Physics at the University of Limerick.

“When people start turning on kettles and things in the evening, the batteries can step in for a while so that the grid stays stable. 

"If they’re not there, then the grid’s output power and input power won’t balance. 

"And then the grid would crash, which is what happened in Spain a few months ago,” says Lynch, referring to a major power blackout in April across the Iberian Peninsula, which affected mainland Portugal and Spain, with electric power interrupted for about 10 hours — and longer in some areas.

The outage saw cities grind to a halt, with thousands stranded on trains and in lifts, and flights cancelled.

Here, the State is also relying on battery energy storage systems (BESS) to help achieve its target of a 75% reduction in emissions by 2030. 

“The closer and closer we get to 100% electricity coming from renewables, the more and more batteries we would need on the grid. 

"We cannot have renewable energy power grid without the batteries,” says Lynch.

Electricity grid

“Unless we go to nuclear energy, it’s our future,” he adds.

Bobby Smith, the head of Energy Storage Ireland, the all-island advocacy association for the energy storage industry, agrees.

“It’s not just green and clean energy, it’s also more affordable energy because it’s displacing more expensive fossil fuels,” he says.

“We’re currently seeing just how international gas prices are impacting our electricity prices. The quicker we get off that by using our indigenous renewable energy resources, including energy storage, the better.

“That should definitely bring more affordable and stable electricity prices for consumers,” he adds.

The membership of his organisation has grown from 20 in 2020, to 78 energy companies today. 

It parallels the surge in planning applications being submitted to county councils around the country for large-scale battery storage facilities in the past two years, something which Smith doesn’t see slowing down any time soon.

“That’ll be the expectation. We want to obviously displace fossil fuels.

“We want to have a stable electricity grid. And we want to have affordable energy and wind solar energy storage. And to do it right.”

Doing it ‘right’ also means planning for batteries’ biggest hazard, fire.

The risk can be mitigated against but never completely eliminated. 

If a battery cell becomes unstable, a chain reaction spreads to adjacent cells in a reaction called thermal runaway which is very difficult to stop.

Flammable and toxic gases are released and, in the worst-case scenario, intense fires break out. 

Battery fires are uniquely hazardous in that even if the fire is extinguished, thermal runaway can re-ignite hours or days after the fire is extinguished. 

The batteries are best cooled down through water immersion and firefighters must distinguish between extinguishing and cooling.

“It’s unlikely for there to be a fire,” says Lynch. “But if there was it would be contained within that one container. Everything has risks. Things do go on fire. It’s a question of mitigating those risks,” he says.

Battery fires are “extremely, extremely rare,” agrees Smith. 

“We already have thousands and thousands of these facilities operating globally. The industry is continuously learning and evolving and updating its safety standards of best practice.”

The Newmarket Environmental Protection Group protest. 

Last January 29, a fire broke out at the Xerotech Ltd Lithium-ion battery manufacturing and storage facility at Claregalway Corporate Park, Galway. 

It forced nearby businesses, schools, and homes to be evacuated for several days. 

Five firefighters were treated in hospital for smoke inhalation as a precautionary measure. The company folded less than a month later.

Despite his injuries, Chief Clare is not against battery storage plants.

“I am not anti-batteries at all,” he says. “I’m very pro-training and partnerships with those that have us mitigating their emergencies. And you would think somebody that was blown up by batteries would be anti-batteries. But we have to understand the beast that we’re dealing with.”

Do Irish firefighters understand the ‘beast’ they will have to increasingly face? 

Galway Fire Service did not respond to requests for comment on their experiences in the Claregalway fire. 

The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, which has overall responsibility for the fire services, was asked if there was any national roll-out of hazmat training programmes for local fire services focussing specifically on Lithium BESS facilities.

A spokesperson said “the assessment of fire cover needs … is a statutory function of individual fire authorities.”

The National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management provides a general central training programme and issues “guidance on operational matters”, but did not explicitly mention battery training.

A 2023 department ‘pre-incident planning’ document on best practice for assessing fire hazards makes no mention of BESS facilities either. Another standard operational guidance document on incidents involving electricity also had no mention of BESS facilities and was dated June 2010.

No plan in place

Con O’Connor, his wife Maura Cronin O’Connor, and their three young children are living and farming in the townland of Curraduff, near Newmarket, North Cork.

They have recently appealed to An Coimisiún Pleanála a decision by Cork County Council to grant planning permission for a 72-container BESS facility on lands bordering their farm.

Their parents’ house is less than 200m from the proposed facility. 

They hope to continue dairy farming and pass it on to the next generation, but believe the BESS poses a direct risk to that.

Con O'Connor and Maura Cronin O'Connor with their three sons looking over their ditch to the site of a proposed battery energy storage system at Curraduff, Glenlara, Newmarket, Co Cork.  

“Fire is breaking out in the best facilities around the world, so the risk is still there,” Maura Cronin O’Connor says.

“The biggest problem we have is that there’s no plan in place if a fire does happen. Fair enough mitigation is there. We’re hoping nothing would ever happen. But if it does, what’s the plan?”

“There was one community meeting,” says Cronin-O’Connor, who is spokesperson for Newmarket Environmental Protection Group. “One of the local community members asked ‘what do we do in the instance of fire? What about the town? What about the evacuation of schools and stuff?’ and it was pretty much ignored. There’s no evacuation plan.”

The planning application by French renewable energy group Neoen Renewables Ltd attracted 190 objections from the local community and 89 observations on the appeal.

Galetech Energy Services, which submitted the application on behalf of Neoen was contacted for comment.

Even a piggery needs an EIA

One of the biggest factors undermining public confidence in BESS facilities are gaps in the current laws which mean operators don’t have to apply for a fire safety certificate, don’t have to submit an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report, and are not subject to the Chemicals Act or the Control of Major Accident Hazards involving Dangerous Substances Regulations 2015.

In May 2024, then environment minister Eamon Ryan told Niamh Smyth TD in a written reply that BESS facilities were “not considered a substance or mixture and therefore not a dangerous substance”.

Former Green Party senator Vincent P Martin introduced a bill on October 9 2024 to amend the Planning and Development Regulations 2001 and make BESS facilities require an EIA report.

He told the Seanad that his bill “should improve the all-important local community buy-in”.

“A piggery, for example, requires an environmental impact assessment, but there is no such obligation on these large-scale projects.”

Energy Storage Ireland chief Bobby Smith points out that many BESS operators submit a Natura Impact Assessment voluntarily. 

But Martin believes that’s beside the point: “What are they afraid of? If it’s so good it should be able to withstand the rigours of an EIA,” he tells the Irish Examiner.

Senator Vincent P Martin introduced a bill on October 9 2024 to amend the Planning and Development Regulations 2001 and make BESS facilities require an EIA report.

Cronin-O’Connor agrees that making EIA reports mandatory “would be a definite help”.

However, a Department of Local Government spokesperson said it was up to individual county councils or An Coimisiún Pleanála to determine whether an EIA is required and confirmed they do not intend to update the current 2001 regulation to make EIA reports mandatory for battery facilities.

A Department of Enterprise spokesperson also confirmed they had no plans to include lithium BESS facilities in the scope of an EU directive on industrial sites and flammable, toxic, or explosive substances.

Vincent P Martin’s bill expired after the last general election, and while Fine Gael senator Seán Kyne restored it to the order of business in June, he made it clear he would not be progressing it further. 

A Green Party spokesperson also said “it is not planned for the party to advance the bill in the term of this Seanad”.

Has the Government dropped the ball by failing to address public concerns? Both sides of the debate are calling for the State to step up and engage with communities.

“There’s definitely room for further engagement. We support that,” says Bobby Smith of Energy Storage Ireland.

He believes promoting the benefits of battery storage is incumbent on the Government, political parties, and local authorities.

“I think we shouldn’t be behind the door, allowing distrust to build up,” says Martin.

“The Government should be all over this, being proactive, trying to instil confidence in this process.”

BESS regulation is widely spread across the remits of several government departments: Climate, Energy and the Environment, Housing, Local Government and Heritage and Enterprise, Tourism and Employment.

The Department of Energy hosted a stakeholder forum on November 21 last year, the only actionable outcome of which was to continue to talk among government departments “with a view to clarifying the standards and safety” of BESS facilities.

Martin claims this “lack of a specific government State agency standing up and saying ‘this is us, we’re the regulatory authority’,” is the bigger point.

“There’s a lot of questions the Government have to answer as to what we’re actually doing with the renewable energy space, and battery energy storage systems are part of that,” says Cronin-O’Connor.

Speaking at the annual Michael Collins commemoration at Béal na Bláth in West Cork, health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill had a message for “those who object today to the development of solar or wind energy”.

“I say: Please, no. Please think in long strides.”

The Government’s current approach however, “just doesn’t seem to be the right way about it”, according to Cronin O’Connor. “

And it doesn’t seem to be open for negotiation or discussion. We’re really trying to get our point across, as are, I would say at this stage, hundreds of communities.