The Glenville Town Board has voted in favor of placing a moratorium on battery energy storage systems.
At a town board meeting Wednesday, members unanimously voted to place a 120-day moratorium on battery energy storage systems in the Schenectady County community.
It prevents the town from accepting applications for systems that store energy from things like power grids, solar farms and wind turbines to be used at a later date.
Daniel Hill chairs the town’s Environmental Conservation Commission. He, along with other members of the commission, recommended the town board enact the moratorium.
Although the systems can take different forms, Hill says the most common resemble self-storage facilities.
“They store it for when the demand on the grid is higher and then the energy comes out of the batteries, back into the grid,” he said.
But he says the town lacks the ability to properly regulate the systems.
“We don’t have any regulations about where they can be, what size they can be, what safety features they need to have, anything like that,” he said.
Hill says battery energy storage systems are becoming more common as the use of sustainable energy sources like solar and wind grows.
Councilor Michael Aragosa, a Democrat, says residents are beginning to receive letters from companies seeking to lease land to construct the systems.
“We need to take a pause, learn, find out from others what best practices are and then come up with our own code, and formulate that,” he said.
Aragosa says he is also concerned about responding firefighters in case a system catches fire.
“Are our fire departments ready if there is a fire? If one of them catches fire, I mean, we see time and time again of storage facilities that light on fire and do the local fire departments have the ability to take care of it? And that’s again what we are looking at,” Aragosa said.
He says the reason for the moratorium is simple.
“We’re pausing to get a better handle on how to handle it going forward,” he said.
Acting town supervisor Robert Kirkham Jr. says the town board will begin working with the Environmental Conservation Commission and the Planning Department to develop new town codes to regulate new systems.
“This will give us a great opportunity to dive deep into looking into not only the risk that may be there for the environment, but for our first responders and for our residents,” he said.
Glenville’s moratorium follows in the footsteps of other nearby municipalities such as Rotterdam and Clifton Park. Each has adopted a moratorium on battery energy storage systems.
Hills says the environmental commission is set to begin working on developing new town codes for the storage systems tonight.
He says the biggest thing the commission will have to decide is where the battery storage systems should be allowed.
“Is it specific zoning areas, is it specific types of property,” he said.
