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Big Battery gets closer in Chelsea
By adamg on Fri, 10/04/2024 - 9:38am
The Chelsea Record reports the city Planning Board has approved a proposed industrial-strength battery complex on Eastern Avenue that will use two floors of batteries to store electricity for the local grid for times when it just needs some more juice. Flatiron Energy's proposal now goes to the city zoning board.
Flatiron says it's also working with the Chelsea Fire Department on emergency plans.
The company last month filed plans with the Boston Planning Department for a similar complex on Electric Avenue in Brighton.
Electric companies now typically supplement supplies with fossil-fuel-fired "peaker" plants. Flatiron's proposals over the long term are aimed at storing energy from renewable sources, in particular solar and wind, to provide electricity when the wind dies down or after the sun sets.
Both the Chelsea and Brighton facilities would be located next to existing substations through which to connect to the local grid.
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Comments
Batteries are the missing link
Batteries aren't without risk and drawbacks but that's true with every type of energy storage and delivery system. For all the disastrous fires caused by faulty batteries, there are 10x sudden explosions due to national gas leaks and destroyed property and damage from an oil tank rupture. Putting a battery station far away greatly reduces the value due to line loss.
The best solution is simply to use far less energy overall.
And
How the fuck is that supposed to happen with the EV push? You haven’t seen anything yet.
Make sure they're included
(h/t Steven Wright)
Floodwater and batteries don't mix
Locating giant batteries in known flood zones is a bad idea. Do we really want to be dealing with exploding battery plants, adjacent to gas storage tanks, during the big storm? There must be better locations for this.
Lungs and fossil fuel "peaking" stations don't mix
You realize that the batteries can be elevated out of the food zone, yes?
This is in the proposal. Please read before commenting.
That sounds like a whole lotta nimby
At low tide Provincetown is only about 5 cm above sea level and we still managed to build one.
As my dead daddy used to say: stop your belly-aching.
Feel free to disagree with
Feel free to disagree with their premise all you want but accusing someone of Chelsea of being NIMBY when it comes to industrial usage along the waterfront is laughable at best.
Don't get me wrong, I love Provincetown and I enjoy visiting but... yeah that's an odd road to go down when dismissing the concerns of someone who lives in a hyper industrialized urban inner suburb with minimal access to coastline and waterfront.
Chelsea houses and acts as transit hub for everything from road salt, to produce, manufactured goods, oil and more. Not to mention the overhead noise from airplanes, road closures for large ships and trains and of course the non stop taxis and ubers racing through town.
Not Nimby - Batteries usually make good neighbors
Battery plants don't generate traffic; no noise, no air pollution, improve electric reliability and they offset power plants during peak times - All good and surely better than any other facility that would occupy that heavy industrial zoned space. So not Nimby.
There are plenty of great locations for a battery building - just not in a FEMA flood zone! Bad planning in P-Town is irrelevant.
A 10-foot storm surge and this place is under water, like the Jan 4 2018 storm that flooded Marginal and Eastern Ave.
Let's see what the Chelsea Fire Department has to say about this.
At low tide Provincetown is
That can't possibly be true.
Since there will be two
Since there will be two floors filled with batteries, it's the perfect opportunity to do one each for Duracell and Energizer to see which lasts longer.