The Planning Commission at the City of Ripon has issued a permit extension to Engie after the IPP experienced further delays in commencing construction of its 99MW/396MWh Ripon Reliability BESS project located in San Joaquin County, California.
This recent extension, granted at an August 19th 2024 planning commission meeting, is the second of its kind for the project after Broad Reach Power successfully extended the project’s conditional use permit (CUP) last year, before the independent power producer (IPP) was acquired by Engie during the third quarter of 2023.
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As part of the permit extension, Engie agreed to a series of additional fire mitigation measures after the commission raised concerns surrounding the safety of lithium-ion batteries following several high-profile utility-scale BESS fires since the first issuance of the CUP.
“Notoriously slow” interconnection process and supply-chain delays
The City of Ripon’s planning commission first issued a CUP for the Ripon Reliability project to its initial developer, BayWa r.e., in May 2021. Under the terms of the CUP, construction on the project was required to commence within two years of the CUP issuance date.
BRP acquired the project, also referred to as Noosa Energy Storage, from BayWa r.e. in 2022, and was unable to commence construction on the development within the two-year window.
BRP requested a one year extension to the CUP which was granted by the planning commission in February 2023, with the developer blaming the inability to commence construction on “Covid supply-chain disruptions” and interconnection delays caused by investor-owned utility (IOU) Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E).
In a letter to Ripon’s planning commission, BRP stated that the construction work required to connect the project to PG&E’s network had been affected by the utility’s “lack of staffing”, even describing the interconnection procedure as “a notoriously slow process”.
“Significant increased importance” of fire mitigation measures
Since the original permit was issued in 2021, the issue of lithium-ion battery safety has become a hot topic of conversation within the industry, but also amongst the general public, following several widely reported lithium-ion battery fires across the US.
As stated within documents prepared for the recent planning commission meeting, hazard mitigation and preparation of an emergency response plan has taken on a “significant increased importance” following recent fire incidents.
Despite there being a handful of examples to draw upon, the planning commission made reference to a fire which occurred in September 2022 at PG&E’s Elkhorn Battery Storage facility in Monterey County, California.
As reported by Energy-Storage.news, this particular fire was isolated to one battery pack that burned for five hours and caused a 12-hour shelter-in-place order for local residents. Following the fire, Energy Safety Response Group (ESRG) was commissioned by PG&E to create a report summarising all available information relating to the incident. The report was published by ESRG in September 2023 and can be found here.
Tesla 2XL Megapack
In the lead up to the permit extension hearing, Engie decided that it would utilise Tesla’s 2XL Megapack for the Ripon project, as opposed to Tesla’s first generation Megapack which it initially planned to use. According to the ESRG September 2023 report, it was one of Tesla’s first generation Megapacks that caught fire after a thermal runaway event at the Elkhorn facility.
The 2XL Megapack is a popular storage unit choice amongst IPPs and utility’s across the US, including IOU Georgia Power who recently signed an agreement with Tesla to supply 2GWh worth of the 2XL storage units for a four project utility-owned BESS portfolio.
The City of Ripon also took extra investigative steps ahead of the hearing, including hiring ESRG to peer review Engie’s Hazard Mitigation Analysis, Emergency Response Plan and Decommissioning Plan reports associated with the Ripon project, as well as visiting PG&E’s Elkhorn project to to carry out further due diligence.
Additional fire mitigation measures
After carrying out its additional research, the planning commission granted Engie an extension to its CUP, but only if the developer agreed to 15 additional fire mitigation measures associated with development of the project.
In terms of educational measures, Engie agreed to cover the local fire department’s costs associated with training its personnel on dealing with lithium-ion BESS fires.
If a fire were to occur, Engie said it will deploy trained personnel within 30 minutes of the incident to assist with public safety, along with public relations personnel to assist with outreach. Engie will also have the ability to isolate the BESS from the grid and de-energise the site without affecting emergency lighting and on-air monitoring systems, in the event of an emergency.
The full list of mitigation measures can be found on page 15 in the following City of Ripon Planning Commission document.
Resource Adequacy Agreements
Two California community choice aggregators (CCAs), Ava Community Energy and San Jose Clean Energy, have previously signed agreements to purchase resource adequacy from a portion of the Ripon Reliability project. However, it’s unclear how the delays to the project have affected these agreements.
According to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) interconnection queue, the project will be connected to the grid in May 2025 (queue number 1557), which is considerably later than the initial expected online date of December 2022 as stated on the California queue.
Another BESS fire in California
As recently reported by Energy-Storage.news, a fire broke out on September 5, 2024 at a BESS facility located at the site of IOU San Diego Gas & Electric’s (SDG&E’s) Escondido substation in San Diego County, California. According to a joint statement issued by SDG&E and the Escondido fire department, the fire affected only one of the 24 BESS units which was extinguished by 1am the following day on Friday 6 September.
Coincidently, supervisors at San Diego County held a public meeting yesterday (11 September) to discuss new standards surrounding the development of BESS facilities, including potentially instating a moratorium on the development of any new BESS facilities within the county.
The public hearing follows last month’s San Diego county meeting where supervisors voted to adopt new BESS standards, as covered in Energy-Storage.news.
