The US is in the midst of a battery boom critical to keeping the lights on amid heat waves, winter storms and surging electricity demand from artificial intelligence. But developers are increasingly encountering an implacable foe: communities afraid that large lithium-ion storage farms could spontaneously burst into flames.
As installations grow larger and are placed closer to neighborhoods, on farmland or in high-risk wildfire areas, local opposition is growing. That puts many states in a bind as they depend on renewable energy to meet rising electricity demand and to achieve climate targets. The expansion of solar and wind energy is tied in part to batteries, which can store electricity for use after the sun sets and the wind stops blowing. They’re also key to the growth of data centers, which face rising resistance as well.
The rush to secure sites near key transmission lines for battery energy storage systems, or BESS, has led developers to places like Acton, California, a bucolic Los Angeles County town of horse ranches and animal sanctuaries. There, Blackstone-affiliated Coval Infrastructure wants to build the world’s second-largest BESS, a $1.9 billion facility called the Prairie Song Reliability Project…