Clean Energy push could bring big project to small community
 
By
Daniel Beekman
Seattle Times staff reporter
COVINGTON — James DeLay realized there might be something unusual happening at the property next to his house when he saw an expensive-looking drone buzzing in the air over the spot this spring, taking photos.
But he didn’t start panicking until he tracked down a permit application and discovered that a Nebraska-based company was planning to pack the 14-acre site between his home and a middle school with one of the country’s largest storage systems of lithium batteries, which are used in phones, laptops and cars and which can burst into flames when things go wrong.
Rather than look out across a meadow, DeLay learned that his yard might soon abut a $250 million complex with more than 100 battery boxes the size of shipping containers — and that his neighborhood might soon become ground zero for Washington’s clean-energy revolution.
Experts say industrial-scale battery energy storage systems (sometimes called BESS) are poised to play a crucial role in combating climate change in this state and beyond, as electric utilities increase their reliance on renewable resources like solar and wind power to comply with new laws. It’s possible for such systems to be safely sited and supervised, experts say.
But the huge complexes are relatively new everywhere and none exist in Washington today, so a sudden surge of proposals has sent cities, counties and residents scrambling to understand what risks the projects may pose and where they should be allowed.
 
Among more than 3,000 U.S. jurisdictions recently studied by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, only 12 had regulations tailored to BESS. And yet, “If you haven’t already seen an application … in your jurisdiction, you likely will,” PNNL research analyst Jeremy Twitchell said during a Washington State Energy Office workshop last year. “If we’re going to decarbonize, we’re going to need energy storage.”
DeLay isn’t opposed to clean energy. He has solar panels on his roof and a backup battery in his garage. But when he punched search terms into Google, disturbing headlines about storage systems popped up. From Arizona, where an explosion badly injured firefighters and a fire burned for almost two weeks. From California, where a blaze shut down a highway and triggered a shelter-in-place order. Before long, the suburban dad had created a Facebook group to warn neighbors and was distributing flyers door-to-door.
“Who are these people? What is this thing? I just went down the rabbit hole,” said DeLay, whose campaign to halt the project is gaining momentum.
More than 100 people crowded a Covington City Council meeting last month to hear from the project’s developer, Tenaska, and to raise objections. The site is in unincorporated King County but borders Covington. The school is in the Kent School District; the school board voted last week to oppose the project.
“I am still very worried about the location,” Covington City Council Member Joseph Cimaomo Jr. said after Tenaska’s presentation. “This project may be a need, but I don’t believe it is a need to be right next to a middle school.”
CLEAN ENERGY
Large-scale battery projects are popping up in Washington partly because customer electricity use is growing and partly because the state Legislature passed a law in 2019 aimed at eliminating carbon emissions from the electrical grid. The Clean Energy Transformation Act says utilities must stop using coal plants to generate power by 2025, mostly stop using gas plants by 2030 and go 100% renewable by 2045.
To hit those targets, utilities need to use more solar and wind power. A challenge is that solar farms and windmills only generate electricity when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, unlike coal and gas plants, which can operate nonstop and be dialed up during peak demand.
In Washington, public-owned utilities like Seattle City Light already generate and store a lot of power using hydroelectric dams. Investor-owned utilities like Puget Sound Energy have less access to hydro, so they may depend more on big batteries to manage their power.
That’s why Bellevue-based PSE included battery systems in a 2021 request for development proposals. The utility recently estimated it will require 1,000 megawatts of storage by 2030 and 1,800 by 2045.
Tenaska says it wants to build a 200-megawatt BESS next to DeLay’s house, enough to power 200,000 homes for four hours. If the project gets built, PSE could buy it from Tenaska outright, buy a stake, or pay to use the system. There’s a PSE substation about a half-mile away.
 
“What the utilities are looking for … is firm, dispatchable power,” Tenaska representative Tommy Nelson told the Covington council. “Batteries happen to be a great example.”
Because other states have also set clean-energy targets and because Congress included tax credits for stand-alone energy storage projects in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, the battery sector is booming.
Before 2020, there were zero complexes in the U.S. capable of storing 50-plus megawatts, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Now there are over 50 operating (mostly in Texas and California), including nine of at least 200 megawatts. More are on the way.
The project outside Covington is one of five that Tenaska is working to site in Washington, said Tim Hemig, the company’s senior vice president for development. For context, the largest operating BESS in the state today is a PSE complex with a capacity of just 2 megawatts.
“This stuff has come at us pretty fast,” said Fred Heutte, senior policy associate at the NW Energy Coalition. “There’s a huge opportunity” to bolster the grid, “but we’ve got to get it right.”
FIRE RISKS
Most people use lithium batteries every day, without thinking twice. The special danger is that such batteries, when allowed to become too hot, can produce a chemical reaction that creates even more heat. That phenomenon, called thermal runaway, can in extreme cases cause explosions or start fires that can’t be extinguished the same way as conventional fires.
A database managed by the Electric Power Research Institute lists 50 “failure events” globally since 2018 involving stationary battery storage, mostly outside the U.S. There are almost 500 systems in the U.S., per EIA data.
Tenaska’s battery complex near Covington would be equipped with various safety components, including remote-warning and automatic-shutdown protections, the company has said. In instances where a container in a grid-scale system has caught fire, the flames haven’t spread to adjacent containers, according to Tenaska, which has met with the Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority and pledged training for local firefighters.
Neighbors of the site by Covington point to various hazards. When responding to a big battery fire, firefighters spray enormous amounts of water or let the blaze burn for hours or days. Burning batteries can emit toxic gases, potentially contaminating the ground or air and harming people. Community members may be directed to evacuate the vicinity, a Tenaska consultant told Covington council members.
On the one hand, City Light installed a very small battery system in 2021 at Seattle’s Miller Community Center, next to Meany Middle School, with no problems reported to date. On the other, a fire erupted last week at a larger complex on a school district property near New York City. There were no injuries but the multiday blaze spurred the district to close facilities.
“WILD WEST”
Covington isn’t the only hot spot for big batteries. There were three proposals in Skagit County as of November, including a Tenaska project near Sedro-Woolley. In that case, the county has determined the permit application to be incomplete and requested additional information, a Skagit official said.
Renton barred such systems last year, after Tenaska inquired about siting a BESS in an environmentally sensitive zone. The city wanted to wait for more guidance, said Vanessa Dolbee, Renton’s planning director. The Washington State Building Code Council adopted an emergency rule in January for fire safety at energy storage systems. Further updates will take effect in October.
“The regulations are still catching up to the technology,” Dolbee said.
Tenaska is now negotiating with Tukwila about buying or leasing a city property near Southcenter mall, to access the same PSE substation it initially hoped to access via Renton. The project would be subject to land-use and environmental reviews, a Tukwila official said.
Cities and counties are somewhat on their own. The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission watchdogs how utilities are pursuing their clean-energy targets and incorporating costs into customer rates. The Energy Office is a source of grants and information, and BESS developers have the option to seek certification via Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, rather than via a local jurisdiction. But no one state agency is responsible for tracking all the proposed projects and ensuring they’re sited appropriately.
DeLay’s impression: “It’s basically like the Wild West.”
Experts say the storage systems are most effective when sited near substations, which transfer electricity from long-distance transmission lines to neighborhoods. Though batteries may also be co-located with solar farms and windmills in the middle of nowhere, putting them by substations can help utilities serve customers quicker and easier, said Twitchell, from PNNL.
“We want to pair these resources where they add the most value,” said Josh Jacobs, PSE’s vice president of clean energy strategy.
It’s a Catch-22, with big batteries best suited for some of the places they’re most likely to stir opposition, like DeLay’s neighborhood.
QUIET COMMUNITY
The 49-year-old sales manager lives up a gravel road on a parcel secluded by wooded wetlands and Tenaska’s proposed project site, an undulating tract currently occupied by one house and swaths of grass.
This is where suburban sprawl meets country living. Driving north, you see horses. East and west, you pass cul-de-sacs. Deer swipe blueberries from DeLay’s yard. The project site is zoned for rural housing; under Tenaska’s preliminary design, batteries would cover about 10 of 14 acres. Neighbors say the BESS could wreck their property values.
“People didn’t move out to Covington to be next to an industrial facility,” DeLay said at the home where he and his wife, Desiree, are raising two kids.
Foes like the DeLays argue the location is wrong for big batteries because sensitive wetlands cover much of the site and because an incident could place residents and students in danger. Mattson Middle School is immediately south of the property.
“We’re talking about a potential fire,” said parent Stacy Miller, vice president of Mattson’s Parent Teacher Student Association. “We’re talking about contamination going into the air … a catastrophe in our community.”
Noise is another source of anxiety. Think about the hum your laptop battery makes; then think about 10 acres crammed with batteries.
“How is that going to affect the learning?” neighbor Dorothy Sica asked during the Covington council meeting.
Mitigation measures would keep the noise below 50 decibels at the complex’s perimeter, Tenaska’s Nelson said, comparing that to “when your heat pump kicks on” at home. Batteries create no emissions during normal operation and can be hidden behind trees, walls and fences, he said, and the project’s construction means paychecks for about 100 union workers.
Tenaska would adhere to the industry’s best safety standards, learning from prior incidents, Nelson added. “The bottom line,” he said, is that battery systems use “safe and proven technology” and carry minimal safety risks “when properly designed, installed, tested and maintained.”
When asked about similar sites at the Covington meeting, Nelson cited a Tenaska project across the street from a California school. The public’s response in that case? “They were supportive,” he said.
PUBLIC INTEREST
That doesn’t sound right to Christy Boal, Lorina Nicols and Elodia Campos, parents on the School Site Council at Grand Terrace High School, near San Bernardino. They didn’t know a 200-megawatt battery complex was being built until last month, when contacted by The Seattle Times. Nor did other parents, they said. The Grand Terrace Planning Commission approved the project in 2021; there were no public comments.
“We were not notified,” said Campos, feeling that her community is being treated “like the guinea pig” for other projects. “It’s very concerning.”
Experts say government officials should strike a balance between scrutiny and progress. They can use zoning regulations to site good projects while protecting community members, PNNL’s Twitchell said.
“These are not mutually exclusive objectives,” he said.
The NW Energy Coalition’s Heutte agreed, saying projects should be sited equitably, with respect for historically disadvantaged communities.
Washington’s Energy Office is sharing options rather than telling cities and counties how to handle BESS proposals. For example, Whatcom County passed a law last year that limits complexes of 5-plus megawatts to industrial zones and rural sites near substations. That approach could prove more challenging in densely populated King County.
The potential project near Covington is being reviewed by King County’s Permitting Division. Tenaska applied for a conditional use permit in February but hit pause last month after county staff raised questions.
Covington council members said they hoped the county would host a hearing at Mattson. Nothing like that has been planned yet, the Permitting Division said. DeLay is worried about the process restarting quietly, so he regularly checks the division’s website for updates.
“We don’t want this here,” he said.